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MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 



Life and Character 

Henry Wilson, 

( VICE-PKESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. ) 



/ERED IN THE 



Senate and House of REniESENTATivEs, 

January 21, 1876, 



WITH OTllEK 



CONGRESSIONAL TRIBUTES OF RESPECT. 



HUntlSllliD IIV ORDER OK CONGRESS. 



WASH! NOT ON: 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 
I S76. 



^•17- 






^^ 



^ 



AUG 6 1908 
B'Mft. 



THE DEATH, FUNERAL SERVICES, AND BURIAL 

OK 

Henry Wilson, 

VICK-PRESIDENT OF THE "UNITED STATES, 
NOVEMBER 10— DECEIVIBER 1, 1875. 



Henry Wilson, Vice-President of the United States, was taken 
ill at the Capitol, ou the morning of November 10, 1875, and was 
taken to the Vice-President's room, where, after his friends had 
began to regard him as nearly well again, he passed away on the 
morning of November 22, at 20 minutes after 7 oclock. 

The funeral ceremonies over the remains of the Vice-President 
were performed in the Senate Chamber on Friday, November 26, 
under the direction of a committee of arrangements, consisting of 
Senators Thurman, of Ohio, and Morrill, of Vermont; Eepresenta- 
tives Garfield, of Ohio, and Kaudall, of Pennsylvania ; the Hon. 
Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State ; the Hon. Mr. Justice Cliflbrd, 
'of the Supreme Court; and the Hon. William Dennisou, a Com- 
missioner of the District of Columbia. 

The President of the United States and his Cabinet, the Diplo- 
matic Cor[is, the Supreme Court, members of Congress, Depart- 
ment officials, officers of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, dele- 
gations from the New England Republican Association and the 
Grand Army of the Republic, citizens of Massachusetts, and per- 
sonal friends and relatives of the deceased, were assigned seats 
on the floor of the Senate Chamber. 



4 THE DEATH, FUNERAL SERVICES, AND BURIAL OF 

At half past ten the remains were brought from the Rotunda 
into the Senate Chamber, preceded by Eev. Dr. Sunderland the 
Chaplain of the Senate, the Sergeant-at Arms of the Senate, and 
the committee of arrangements, and escorted by the pall-bearers, 
Senators Edmunds, Sherman, Bayard, and Whyte, and Eepre- 
sentatives Blaine, Mills, Wood, and Kasson; as the body was 
brought into the Senate Chamber, the Chaplain read a passage 
from the Bible, commencing: "Lord, make me to know thy ways." 

After the coffin had been placed on thie catafalque, Hon. T. W. 
Ferry, President of the Senate ^ro tem., announced that appropri- 
ate services would be performed. Kev. Dr. Sunderland then read 
brief selections from the Bible, followed by — 

J^HE yWtEMORIAL piSCOURSE, 
BY REV J. E. RANKIN, D. D. 

Rev. XIV, 13: "And I heard a voice from Heaven, saying unto 
me. Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from hence- 
forth: Tea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors, 
and their works do follow them." 

All that is mortal of Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, Vice- 
President of the United States, lies enshrined in death's stillness 
before us. He rests from his labors, and his works do follow him. 
The nation pauses in her grief beside his open grave. Her great 
men, her chief captains, her mighty men, every bondman that was. 
and every freeman that is, brings some tribute of honor and of love 
to lay upon his dust. Her deep- voiced cannon lament him. Her' 
proud ensign, which his twenty years of public service contributed 
so much to leave full high advanced, ay, to cleanse of every stigma 
and shame in the world's eye, and in the eye of posterity, droo[)s 
tenderly above him. Even Nature herself has put on the spirit of 
heaviness, and the very clouds drop tears. 

In this honored place, whose chief seat is now vacant, a place 
which has so often echoed to his voice, and where he has always 
stood, the unflinching, the incorruptible defender of human dig- 
nity and human rights; where he has "battled for the true and the 



X 7 



HENRY WILSON. 



just," we, the highest aud the lowliest, his Associates in Goveru- 
ment, his fellow-citizeus — heirs alike of the heritage of freedom, 
which he has done so much to transmit unimpaired, replenished 
with new life— gather for a brief solemnity. It is fitting that our 
words be few. 

Henry Wilson was the product of New England. If there was 
iron in his blood, if there was strength in his muscle, if there was 
backbone in his frame, he owed it, in part, to the tuition of that 
sterile and rocky soil ; to the cold aud inclement, the stern aud 
serious aspects of that uninviting coast to which the Pilgrims came. 
Ay, more than this, Henry Wilson was the product of the New 
England idea — now become the American idea : That man is man, 
and nothing can be greater ; and that when God made man in His 
own image, He made him to have dominion, first, over himself, and, 
then, over just as vast an empire among men, as, under God, he 
could subject to himself. 

Henry Wilson was ambitious. Let us thank God that he was. 
When, on the 16th day of February, 1812, he first saw the light of 
mortal life, he was the heir of three generations of poverty; the 
descendant of three generations of ancestors who had barely kept 
soul and body together; who, in that rough and rugged half- wilder- 
ness of his native New Hampsire, had, one after another, fought a 
losing battle with life, until the grave covered them. Apprenticed 
to asmall farmer at ten years of age,and taking the hard knocksand 
sore deprivations of a choreboy, at that period, when more favored 
young men are nursed and pampered and crammed In school and 
in college; studying the rudiments of his native tongue and the 
history and politics of his native country by the light of pine-knots, 
and by the midnight flashes of smoldering back-logs, he needed 
all his ambition. 

Henry Wilson was ambitious ; but his ambition was ambition to 
serve, to bear burdens, to meet responsibilities, to perform labors; 
to stand in the front rank — not so much that he might lead, as 
that he might take the hard knocks of a leader; that he might 
somewhere and at some time, anywhere and at any time, do the 
country yeoman service, like that ol' Washington and Jeflerson aud 
Adams; that he might enter into the labors of these men, into 
whose spirit he had been baptized as he worked that sterile Yankee 



THE DEATH, FUNERAL SERVICES, AND BURIAL OF 



larm. And duiiug all that dreary apprenticeship of his boyhood 
and youth, illn mined only as he forecast the possible future — 
during all those self denying night-hours of toil; and, later in life, 
at Natick, in the State of his adoption, under the shadow of Bun- 
kei's Hill monument, and in close neighborhood to Lexington and 
Concord, wheu he was thinking out his thoughts to the music of 
the hammer upon the lapstone; when he was measuring his sword 
in debate with the merchants and lawyers of Boston, he was gird- 
ing himself less for leadership, less for dignities and honors, thau 
for life-long service. He sought places of service; he always served 
in them. It was to hini, as though he had caught this counsel from 
his communings with the Eevolutionary period— as though the 
genius of his native land had said to him, in the dreams of his boy- 
hood, " Whosoeverof you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all ;" 
and as though he had been determined in his inmost soul, that by 
that sign he would conquer. It was thus that he came — 

To mold a mighty State's decrees, 

And shape the whisper of the throne. 
In making up our estimiite of this man's character, the vast, the 
proiligious achievements of his life, let us remember its humble 
beginnings; let us remember that when Charles Sumner, the 
Chevalier Bayard pf Freedom, whose snow-white colors were 
always seen in the thickest of the tight, and stained, alas ! with 
his own blood, was studying Classics in the Boston Latin School, 
and walking beneath the favored shades of Harvard, a lad, to 
whose moral intuitions, as a leader of the Free Soil movement, he 
was to owe his first seat in the United States Senate, and who was 
to become his worthy associate and compeer in this foremost body 
of the nation, was earning his livelihood by day, and storing his 
mind by night, on a poverty-stricken farm of New Hampshire; 
and that wheu Charles Sumner was sitting at the feet of such men 
as Judge Story, was in the Cambridge Law School as scholar and 
teacher; was traveling and residing in Europe; when he was 
drinking at the very fountain-heads, both at home and abroad, 
the principles of international and constitutional law, Henry 
Wilson was working in his shoemaker's shop at Natick until mid- 
night, speaking in debating societies made up of his fellow-work- 
men, and slowly lifting himself up until he became the man whom 



HENRT WILSON. 



Massachusetts delighted to honor, and by whom she has been so 
honored in return. 

And in the great cause of Human Freedom, it is beautiful to see 
how these two great men of Massachusetts, born only one year 
apart, starting so differently in life, educated so differently, sup- 
ported and complemented each other. The one a man of books, 
the other a man of men ; the one a man of ideas, the other a man 
of facts; the one a man of the few, the other a man of the many; 
the one closely following his ideal standard ; sometimes almost 
losing himself and being lost to the country in his distance of 
advance before the nation, the other always keeping step with the 
grand movement of the people, going forward only so fast as his 
true popular instinct taught him that the people were ready to 
follow. In these two men, so unlike and yet so representative of 
extremes in American society, the patrician, the plebeian, was the 
New England idea, incarnated, represented on this floor. 

Henry Wilson had a cause in which he believed. He believed 
in it as the cause of man ; ay, he believed in it, also, as the cause 
of God, who had become incarnate and walked among men that 
he might impress it upon us; that he might show the value of 
man; that he might illustrate.His own Golden Rule. In fact, Mr. 
Wilson never could advocate anything in which he did not believe. 
He was not of such facile make, that he could put on the semblance 
of sincerity and earnestness. At the basis of all his action, must be 
sincere moral conviction. He never could take what he conceived 
to be the wrong side of a question, even in the Natick Debating So- 
ciety. He would always buy off or beg off, and get upon what be 
regarded the right side, and then he was himself; then he was a 
host ! He was never afraid of being lonely, if he was on the right 
side. He knew the meaning of these lines of the poet Paber — 

Thrice blest is he to whom is given 

The instinct that can tell 
That God is on the field, when He 

Is most invisible. 

When, as a delegate from Massachusetts to the National Conven- 
tion in Philadelphia in 1848, he repudiated the action of the con- 
vention ; standing, as he did, almost alone, resisting the compli- 
mentary attentions, shall I say blandishments, of such a man as 



Daniel Webster and the other great leaders of the Whig party, 
these were his words to his coustitiieiits : "No bope of political 
reward, no fear of ridicule or denunciation will deter me from act- 
ing up to my convictions of duty." There spoke the men of IGliO; 
the men who bad left England and Holland for conscience' sake. 
But even the sage of Marsbtield, who daily looked off upon the sea 
which brought tbem hither, and who bad aided in building their 
tombs and garnishing their sepulchers, even he did not know 
their voice. Whig men knew, and Democrat tbey knew, but 
what was tbis? Here was a new factor in American politics. 
Conscience and God had entered there. Convictions of duty! Mr. 
Wilson had espoused the cause of Freedom from convictions of 
duty; and from that moment bis pathway to the eminence he se- 
cured, and from which he stepped off into the unseen world, was 
just as sure as there is a God in Heaven, or that He bas said, 
"Them that honor Me I will honor." 

It is customary to speak of the services which great men render 
a sacred cause. Others, on other occasions, will speak of Mr. Wil- 
son's services to the cause of Freedom. There is another aspect 
of this subject quite as important, and for us more appropriate. 
No great man ever helps a great cause, so much as tbat great 
cause develops, elevates, and ennobles him. For, if to belittle 
truth, belittle a man, to accept and defend it, ennobles him. 

It was the peculiar good fortune of Henry Wilson, that be had 
the moral instinct to espouse the cause of Freedom ; to send down 
the roots of his maturing manhood into sucb strong and generous 
soil. And all the buffetings and storms of the conflict which be 
encountered only made him stronger and more heroic, rooted his 
nature deeper in the great principles which are at the foundation 
of all human progress. 

Mr. Wilson did not espouse a cause, to ride on it into power. 
He took it for better or worse ; to rise with it or fall with it ; and 
when this cause rose, he rose upon its crest, and that, partly, be- 
cause the cause itself and his consecration to it had made him 
worthy to rise — had made him one of its truest and best exponents 
and champions. And if other men have failed under the severe tests 
which he withstood, if their feet have been tangled in the snares 
whicli the Tempter sets for great men as well as for other men, it 



HENRY -WILSON. 



may be partly because they were never so under tuition to the same 
holy cause; in serving that cause they were serving themselves. 
If you tell me that Henry Wilson devoted his whole life to the 
cause of Human Freedom — that there was no danger he would not 
dare, no toil he would not endure, no self-sacrifice he would not 
make to advance it, to make its triumphs permanent — then you 
have explained to me the phenomenon of such a man. If he ad- 
vanced the cause, the cause also advanced him. No man can devote 
his life-time to the study and advocacy of such principles as lie at 
the foundation of our Free Institutions, without being ennobled. 
It was what made the giants of a hundred years ago. It is what 
has made the giants of our own time. 

Mr. Wilson had remarkable native endowments, prodigious en- 
ergy, industry, and persistence ; the profoundest conception of the 
sacredness and value of free institutions ; a prophetic instinct as 
to their ultimate triumph ; but he was all the time breathing the 
atmosphere and under the tuition to the principles of the cause 
which he advocated ; and that gave a glow and a glory to his 
character and his life, as when the morning sun greets the uplifted 
Dome of this structure, within which he served, and where he sur- 
rendered his spirit back to the God who gave it. There is a sense 
in which it is not irreverent to say that he was inspired by that 
cause. It was inspiration to him, that he was permitted to fill up 
that which was behind in the labors of those who had gone before 
him. This gave him patience under provocation ; a spirit of forgive- 
ness and forbearance toward those arrayed against him; compos- 
ure and serenity alike in defeat and success. He knew that the 
cause was moving on, in sunshine and cloud ; whether in debate 
upon this floor, whether upon the battle-fields, where our soldiers 
were using other arguments. He saw the pillar of the cloud by 
day and of the fire by night, always leading on the Hosts of Free- 
dom ; moving as they moved, pausing as they paused, never for- 
saking them. 

It was no after-thought with Mr. Wilson, it was no measure of 
political expediency, which led him in 1875, to travel over portions 
of the South, giving utterance to sentiments of kindliness to those 
who had lately been in arms against the nation. On the 1st of 
May, 1862, when the blood of Massachusetts men had scarcely 



THE DEATH, FUNERAL SERVICES, AND BURIAL OF 



dried iu the streets of Baltimore, when the guns which had been 
pointed at Fort Sumter, and which had driven bacli our forces 
upon this city after the first battle of Bull Run, were still making 
the ears of this nation tingle with shame, Mr. Wilson had said 
upon this floor, "After the conflict, when the din of battle has 
ceased, the humane and kindly and charitable feelings of the 
country and of the world will require us to deal gently with the 
masses of the people who .are engaged in the rebellion." He had 
no hostility against men in that conflict. He had hostility only 
against that crime against man, and that siu against man's 
Creator, with which the Judge of all the earth was dealing with 
the nation upon the battle-field. And when God had given judg- 
ment, he was content; for the enemies of his country were also 
men, and they were not the first of whom it might be said, 
" Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." 

It was natural that Henry Wilson should become a Christian, 
the very moment he gaw? his careful attention to the claims of the 
Lord Jesus as a Teacher and a Saviour. It was like him, when he 
became a Christian, to confess it before men. He never sup- 
pressed his convictions of duty. He had never been wanting in 
the moralities of life. He was a pure-minded husband and a 
tender father; a dutifnl son; a firm and untiring advocate of the 
temperance cause; for many years president of the Congressional 
Temperance Society ; a man strictly straightforward and upright 
in all his dealings with men. But he saw that neither upon the 
basis of public service nor of private worth, could he stand before 
Him with whom we have to do. He therefore made a public con- 
fession of his repentance for sin, and faith in the Lord Jesus, and 
united with the Congregational Church in Natick. 

Confronted with eternity, all men are equals; just as some of 
the heavenly bodies are so remote from earth as to annihilate 
their distance from each other. The same truth which comforted 
and re-assured those humble fishermen of Galilee, soothed and sus- 
tained and cheered this dying statesman of the American Eepub- 
lic. Two thousand years of earthly change and progress in insti- 
tutions, in customs, in manners have not changed the heart of 
man, have not changed the eternal truth of God. It was the 
sagacious instinct, the moral genius of Napoleon I, which led him 



HENRY -mLSON. 



to say, "Christ proved Himself to be tbe Son of the Eternal, by 
His disregard of time. All His doctrines signify one and tbe 
same thing — Eternity." And so when any man, with the instinct 
of immortality stirring within him, comes to the verge where he 
looks off upon eternity, when no longer "far inland," but upon the 
very brink — 

His soul has sight of that immortal sea, which brought him hither, 
he loses all his earthly peculiarity ; all that which has distinguished 
him from the rest of his race — the elevation to which the men of 
his generation have lifted him; the isolation of honor to which he 
has been consecrated ; tbe loneliness of tbe great — and becomes 
only, purely man again; with the same frailties, the same anxieties, 
the same affectionate yearnings and tenderness ; with the same 
need of a Divine Comforter, as the humblest and most unknown 
of his fellow-mortals. 

It Ciinnotbe said of Heney Wilson that he died and made no 
sign ; that living in the nineteenth century which dates from the 
birth of tbe Lord Jesus Christ, living when tbe power of His life 
and death has been felt by every nation on the face of tbe earth; 
has gone into institutions; has gone into laws; has made even 
tyranny and oppression endurable; has clothed the horrors of war 
with something of gentleness ar.d humanity ; has lifted tbe nations 
into a kind of universal brotherhood, so that the chief rulers of 
the earth have become nursing fathers and nursing mothers in His 
kingdom ; and the prediction of the prophet (hat men shall learn 
war no more, seems less and less like a distempered dream — 1 say 
it cannot be said of Henry Wilson that, living at such a period, 
he died like— 

A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn ; 
he died as though life and immortality had not been brought to 
light in the Gospel. It is no vain curiosity which makes a Chris- 
tian nation ask what its rulers think of Christ. Would that they 
asked it oftener before they selected them — before they came to die. 
It is only a few days since — alas ! that we are separated from it as if 
by centuries — that the first few verses of the fourteenth cbai)ter 
of John were read at Mr. Wilson's bedside. When the reading 
reached the third verse: "And if I go and prepare a place for you, 



THE DEATH, FUNERAL SERVICES, AND BURIAL OP 



I will come again and receive you uuto myself," he interrupted; 
with a kindling eye and a cheek aglow, "What clearer revelation," 
said he, "could there be of a hereafter — of heaven as a place, of 
the continued personality of our beiug — of the power to recognize 
and to love those whom we have known in this world! And how 
could such a Being as the Lord Jesus utter such words unless 
they are true? It is impossible to believe him an imposter. It 
is equally impossible to believe that he would raise in us expecta- 
tions never to be realized." Of course I do not undertake to give 
the exact language of the remark, nor can I give you any concep- 
tion of the beauty and thrilling power of what he said. I only 
know this, that when we rose from the prayer which followed, the 
faces of many of us were bathed in tears. And, when that many- 
voiced monitor, that precious memento of his last hours, came into 
my hands, the volume kept under his pillow and read and marked 
at intervals, day and uight, while he knew not at what hour his 
Lord would come, aud I saw these penciled stanzas: 

The eye that shuts in a dying hour 

Will open the next in bliss ; 
The welcome will sound in the heavenly world 

Ere the farewell is hushed in this ; 
We pass from the clasp of mouruing friends 

To the arms of the loved and lost ; 
And those smiling faces will greet us there 

Which on earth we've valued most ; 

and when I turned to the close of the volume and found pasted 
upon flyleaves, photographs of his sainted wife and his soldier- 
boy who died, then I thought that I understood the personal 
application of bis words. 

Mr. Wilson at first hoped to live ; expected to live. He told me 
the day o( his first attack, " There is one thing that I want to finish 
before I go." Without specifying it, I knew that he referred to his 
"History of the Else and Fall of the Slave Power in America;" 
a treatise which of itself is enough for th?, life-work of any single 
man ; but which he was writing in his ease with dignity, as though 
the pastime of an invalid. Did ho have premonition that his 
expectations were to be disappointed 1 Was it for this reason that 
the day before his death he was closeted for hours with an iuti- 



HENRY WILSON. 



mate persoual frieud ? And did be arise at midnight, open that 
little volume, and read — 

But after all these duties I have done, 

Must I, iu point of merit, them disowu 
And trust in Heaven, through Jesus' blood alone? 

Through Jesus' blood alone f 

thinking that perhaps he already heard the footfall of his com- 
ing Lord : thinking of His own words, " Watch ye, therefore, for 
ye know not when the Master of the house cometh, at even, or at 
midnight, or at the cock crowing, or in the morning ; lest coming 
suddenly he find you sleeping f 

Having long ago settled all questions relating to that eternity 
to which he was so near ; accepting anew the testimony of the In- 
fallible Witness respecting it; tender, forgiving, grateful toward 
man ; wondering at the way in which God bad led him ; his spirit 
flooded with a kind of celestial summer; keeping vigil, as it were, 
upon the very scene of his greatest services aud greatest triumphs ; 
ministered to by the affectionate and faithful servants of the na- 
tion herself, as though his sickness could be of no private interpreta- 
tion ; his pathway to the tomb, literally and figuratively, sprinkled 
with flowers ; the very atmosphere of the whole nation throbbing 
with messages of solicitude aud love ; the press giving united tes- 
timony to his worth, ay, winged to God on the prayers of this 
Christian nation ; thus died Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, 
Vice-President of the United States. 

It only remains, reverently to bear this sacred dust back to the 
keeping of the old Commonwealth of Massachusetts: Mother of 
statesmen and of men ; to soil consecrated in the beginning by 
the ashes of the Pilgrim Fathers; to soil which has already, 
during the first century of our national life, gathered to itself the 
dust of the elder and later Adams, the dust of a Webster, an 
Everett, a Sumner— names that will never die! Into such com- 
pany, and worthy of it, Henry Wilson shall enter unchallenged. It 
was his to see with unwavering trust in God and in man, that which 
the great statesman of Marshfield dreaded so much to look on with 
his dying eye — one portion of this Union in arms against another. 
But it was his also to participate in the extermination of that evil 
which had so taxed and defeated the ingenuity aud statesmanship 



THE DEATH, FUNEEAi, SERVICES, AND BUUIAL OF 



of master-iniuds before him. It was bis also to assist in briugiug 
order out of the chaos of civil war; iu securiDg their birthright 
to a uation uew-boru ; aud, though passing through such troublous 
times, it was his crowning blessing to die iu peace, with not one 
feeling of resentment toward the living or the dead. 

Others may be left to determine whether such a mau was a great 
man, and how great he was; to weigh him iu scales and compre- 
hend him in a balance. It is enough for us to thank the God of 
our fathers that he still raises up such men ; men after the old type 
of men; and to believe that so long as lie is careful of this type, 
so long as they continue, the Republic will be safe. For there is 
still- 
One God, one law, one element, 
And one far-oflf, divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves. 

And only those men can bless humanity who, lu that movement, 
are content to be liumble workers together with (Jod ! 

Eev. Dr. Sunderland followed the funeral discourse by an im- 
pressive prayer. He alluded to the deceased as the Immlile 
believer, the faithful citizen, the earnest man, the patriot, the 
philanthropist, and the Christian. He thanked Divine Providence 
for all that He had enabled him to accomplish, aud for that noble 
perseverance and endurance through which he won so many tri- 
umphs. He thanked God that the Vice-President died in faith 
and hope — that he died iu peace with God and mau — a child of 
God, an heir-expectant of the coming resurrection aud the glorious 
immortality of the blessed. He invoked the Divine blessing upon 
our rulers and all others in authority over us. He besought our 
Heavenly Father to remember this nation whose heart is touched 
with grief and whose banners droop iu sadness. In conclusion, 
he asked the Diving blessing upon those who would go to bear 
the sacred ashes of the dead to their last repose. 

Kev. Dr. Sunderland then pronounced the benediction. 

The remains were escorted to the railroad-station by a brig- 
ado of Regulars and volunteers, commanded by Major-General 



HENEY WILSON. 15 

W. H. Emory, U. S. A., aud followed by a long procession, although 
it rained. During the passage of the procession minute-guns were 
fired, bells were tolled, and the bells of the Metropolitan Church 
rang out funeral chimes. 

The governor of Massachusetts having sent a delegation to 
Washington to obtain the remains, they were formally delivered 
to them at the railroad-station by Senator Thurman, who said : 

"Gentlemen op Massachusetts: The funeral ceremonies at 
the National Capitol over the remains of the late Vice-President 
are here concluded, aud we now deliver them to you to convey 
them to the State of which he was a citizen, and by which he was 
so much honored, and which he so well served. In the performance 
of your mournful duty you will carry with you the sympathy of 
the nation, and everywhere meet with sincere marks of respect for 
the illustrious dead." 

Col. Edward Wyman, senior aid-decamp to Governor Gaston, of 
Massachusetts, said, in reply, that he and those associated with him 
accepted the precious trust confided to them, and would convey the 
remains to Massachusetts, there to receive all the honor that love 
and aflection can bestow. He added an expression of his thanks 
for the admirable arrangements which had been perfected, aud for 
the courtesies extended to himself and his colleagues. 

High honors were paid to the remains of the deceased Vice- 
President in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and 
Natick, where they were interred on the 1st of December, 1875. 



ADDRESSES 



Death of Henry Wilson. 



In the ^enate of the JJnited ^tates, 
Friday, January 21, 1876. 



The Chaplain of the Senate, Rev. Byeon Sunderland, 
D. D., oflered the following — 



Ahniglity and everlasting God, the only self-immortal, 
who dwellest in light unapproachable and full of glory, we 
bless and adore Thy name, and give Thee hearty thanks. 
Though we are mortal men and have om- habitation in 
the dust, living under inevitable change, the years roUing 
over us so that we sink into the grave, yet hast Thou for 
us kindled amid this gloom the light of hope. As Thy 
servants turn aside this day to remember him who so late 
presided in this Chamber, we beseech Thee let the 
heavenly assurance fall upon them, as it did upon him, 
that Thou art their Father, Jesus their Savior, the Holy 



3 w 



RESOLUTIONS OF RESPECT. 



Ghost their sanctifier, heaven their glorious heritance 
and lasting home, and all the host of angels and of the 
general assembly and of souls redeemed the bright and 
blessed company of their association finally and forever. 
Tlu-ough Jesus Christ. Amen. 

Resolutions of jR.espect. 

Mr. BouTWELL. Mr. President, I rise to present resolu- 
tions in honor of the late Vice-President of the United 
States, and to ask for them immediate consideration by 
the Senate. 

The President pro tempore. The resolutions will be 
read. 

The Chief Clerk read the resolutions, as follows : 

Eesolved, That the Seuate bas received with profouiul sorrow 
the aunouncemeut of the death of Henry Wilson, hite Vice-Pres- 
iflent of the United States, and President of the Senate, and who 
had been lor eighteen years of consecutive service a member of 
this body. 

Resolved, That business be now suspended, that the friends and 
associates of tlie deceased may pay fitting tribute to his public and 
private virtues. 

Resolved, Tliat the Secretary commuuicate these resobUions to 
the House of Kepresentatives. 

The resolutions were agreed to unanimously. 

The President pro tempore. The Chair will lay before 
the Senate the tribute to the memory of Henry Wilson, 
late Vice-President, paid by American residents in Berlin, 
transmitted tlu'ough the Secretary of State, which the 
Secretary will now report. 



KESOLUTIONS OF RESPECT. 



The Chief Clerk read as follows : 

At a. meeting of Americans resident in Berlin, liolden at the 
American chapel on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1875, Mr. 
Nicholas Fish in the chair, it was — 

Resolved unanimottsly, That we have heard with most profound 
sorrow of the death of the Vice President of the United States, 
IlENKY Wilson, and as a tribute to his memory we desire to re- 
cord our appreciation of the high qualities which distinguished 
him as a man and of the eminent and faithful services which in a 
long public career he has rendered the country by his undeviating 
devotion to the cause of the Union and adherence to the great 
principles of human liberty. That copies of these resolutions be 
transmitted to the President and to the Senate of the United 
States. 



The committee on resolutions : 



H. Kreismann, Chairman. 

William C. Eastlack. 

Herm Rose. 

Jos. P. Thompson. 

A. H. Sylvester. 



To Hon. Thomas W. Ferry, 

President of the Senate of the United States, 

Washington, D. G. 



ADDKESS BY MB. BOUTWELL ON THE 



Address by Mr. Boutwell, of Massachusetts. 



Mr. President, it is a satisfaction which the presence of 
death even cannot extinguish nor qualify that we may- 
record the testimony which we are disposed to give con- 
cerning the character and virtues of those with whom we 
liave been associated. 

The late Vice-President of the United States was a 
member of the Senate for the period of eighteen years, 
and for nearly three years he was its Presiding Officer. 
No man was better known to the Senate, and, of his con- 
temporaries, no one was better known to the countr}^ 
For more than a third of a century he had been in the 
public service of the State of Massachusetts or of the 
United States. The nature of his service was always the 
same. He was, at various times and by repeated elec- 
tions, a member of each branch of the Legislature of 
Massachusetts, and for two years he was the president of its 
Senate. This training was the best pi-eparation which our 
system furnishes for service in the legislative branch of the 
National Government. In this service and for twenty 
years he gained constantly in the good opinion of the 
people of the State and of the country. Such a career 
was not an accident, nor was it due to what is called. 



LIPE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 21 

usually, fortune or favoring circumstances. Indeed, there 
was no man of distinction among his contemporaries to 
whom fortune had denied as much. His parentage was 
honorable, and his ancestry for many generations, and 
without inten-uption on either side, was of New Hamp- 
shire blood and lineage; but they possessed neither wealth 
nor careful culture. The training of a child born into a 
family of wealth and high culture, without pretension or 
pedantry, is of more value for the affairs of the world 
than the education of schools and colleges. 

Mr. Wilson had not the benefits of either, while many 
of his contemporaries enjoyed the advantages of cultured 
homes, cultured society, and the training and discipline 
of school, college, and imiversity. 

Others again, to whom these advantages were denied 
as to Mr. Wilson, were blessed with the tokens of genius, 
distinguishing them at once from the mass of men as 
worthy of eminence and crowning them in anticipation 
without apparent effort for themselves. 

Mr. Wilson was not an orator; he had not the gift of 
eloquence; he had not the power of logical reasoning so 
as to command the assent of unwilling hearers, nor had 
he extraordinary aptitude for scholarly pursuits. By 
training and long-continued practice he became a clear, 
self-contained, convincing ^vl•iter and speaker. At times 
he Vvas more than this, and he exhibited occasionally 
something of the power and quality of the orator. His 
strengtii was chiefly, however, in the depth and earnest- 



ADDRESS BY MR. BOUTWELL ON 'J HE 



ness of his convictions and in his knowledge of the sub- 
jects that he discussed. 

The denial to him of the advantages of early carel'ul 
training, either in his home or in society or in school, of 
high special gifts or unusual faculties in any of the quali- 
ties essential to the successful orator or writer, forces 
upon us the grave question, to what special form of 
genius, power of nature, or accomplishment of art was he 
indebted for the capacity for leadership in the great moral 
and political struggle of historical times? This question 
and its answer concern the American people, who raised 
him to the rank of a leader and trusted, honored, and 
sustained him as a leader, more than they concern the 
reputation or even character of Mr. Wilson as an histori- 
cal personage. First, he was endowed by nature with an 
heroic resolution, which at once urged him to acquire 
knowledge and sustained him in his ceaseless efforts to 
accomplish whatever he undertook. The ability to labor 
was his second great endowment. As he had more 
obstacles to overcome than any other man that we have 
known, so he had more abundant means for overcoming 
the obstacles that were in his way. Resolution to work 
arid ability to work are a substitute for everything except 
genius, and often they become even the rival of genius 
itself. The same restless, untiring spirit that he exhib- 
ited among men in the open day upon questions and 
topics of public political concern, whether of peace or 
war, animated him in his efforts to overcome the defects 



LIFE AND CUARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. L'J 

of early life, and finally to contribute to the history of 
the country a faithful narrative of the great contest in 
which he had acted so important a part. 

But above all and over all as the chief of his endow- 
ments was his fearless, conscientious devotion to duty in 
political public affairs. He came into public life as a 
member of the whig party, but as the representative and 
exponent of the views and wishes of the workingmen. 

The slavery question was soon forced upon us in the 
project for the annexation of Texas. The success of that 
project was followed by other measures designed to 
strengthen, protect, or foster the institution of slavery. 
To all these schemes Mr. Wilson was always and every- 
where opposed. He used parties, he destroyed parties, 
and he organized parties, and all to prevent, first, the 
spread of slavery, and then to overthrow it. From the 
year 1840, when I first met him, he was the unwavering 
opponent of slavery. If other men made larger contribu- 
tions to the intellectual and moral forces engaged in the 
war against slavery, he was chief over all the chiefs in 
the work of combining and organizing those forces for the 
political contests of 1850, 1851, and 1852 in Massachu- 
setts, and for the national contests of 1856 and 1860, 
wliich gave the welcome triumph of freedom to a slavery- 
accursed Republic. His power in this respect was due 
solely to his capacity to present to others the moral and 
political considerations which ought to guide them. 

As a member of the republican party, he was a strict 



24 ADDRESS BY MR. BOUTWELL ON THE 

party man. He believed in its principles, respected its 
opinions, exulted in its power for good, and gloried in its 
history. Ambitious personally, he never allowed his pri- 
vate interests or wishes to interfere with the prospects of 
his party. No man yielded more readily to the opinions 
of his friends or subordinated local and personal claims to 
the general welfare. 

Daring the entire war he occupied one of the most im- 
portant posts in the Senate, and in that post he was first 
of all in the character and value of the services rendered 
to the War Department and to the armies in the field. 
Wlien the war ended he asked only that those who had 
been in aims should accept in good faith the new Constitu- 
tion and the emancipated bondmen as citizens and equals 
in theory and in fact. If he had not the most prominent 
part in amending the Constitution and in providing legal 
means for the reconstruction of the Government, no other 
man did as much to remove the prejudices of the people, 
to encourage the timid, to arouse the indifferent, and, in 
fine, to render those great measures acceptable to the 
country. In this protracted and weary work he thought 
less of himself than of his party and less of his party than 
of his counti-y ; but he identified himself with his party in 
the interests solely of his party, and he vindicated his 
party as the only means of saving his country. Time 
and history will justify him in these particulars. 

He was a politician, a party man, and a statesman as 
well. Of the political anti-slavery men of this country 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. l-'O 

he is of the first and very small class, and history may, 
with justice to all, assign him a leading place even in that 
small class. When we consider the magnitude of the un- 
dertaking by which slavery was overthrown, the military 
operations attending it, in wliich he bore a conspicuous 
and honorable part in the public councils, the difficulties 
that waited upon every attempt to re-organize the Gov- 
ernment, which he as much as any other man assisted in 
removing, and all crowned in his own life with full suc- 
cess, can his right to be counted among the statesmen of 
America be denied ? 

The preservation of this Government from 1861 to 1865 
was a more difficult work than the maintenance of the 
Declaration of Independence from 1776 to 1783, and its 
re-organization was a more delicate task than the forma- 
tion of the Constitution and the establishment of the 
Union in 1787 and 1789; nor can I doubt that these 
later events will contribute more largely to the weltare of 
the human race. 

While slavery existed our example was shunned by 
many who otherwise would have been the advocates of 
republican institutions in other counti-ies. Slavery has 
disappeared, and no argument can be drawn from our 
Constitution, and I trust that hereafter no argument will 
be drawn from our conduct or policy, calculated to pre- 
vent the spread of republican ideas. 

As men prefer truth to falsehood, so they will prefer 
freedom and equality to authority and subserviency, and 



26 ADDRESS BY MB. BOUTWKLL ON THE 

therefore we may predict the spread of republican ideas 
and the advance of republican institutions in other lands. 
For these results and ends Mr. Wilson labored, and 
these results and ends, when realized, will be a better 
eulogy upon his life, character, and services than any pro- 
nounced in pulpit or Senate. 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 



Address by Mr. flamlin, of Mair 



Mr. President, until a very recent hour I did not expect 
to participate in the proceedings of the Senate on this 
occasion, and I rise now for the purpose of seconding the 
resolutions submitted by the Senator from Massachusetts, 
and in a very few words to pay that personal tribute to the 
memory of oui* late Vice-President of which he and the 
work of his Hfe are so eminently worthy. 

In every age and in every country of the world hom- 
age has been paid to the great and the good ; and still 
more appropriately has the custom obtained of paying a 
just tribute to the heroic and meritorious dead. The chisel 
of the sculptor and the pencil of the artist have been in- 
voked to preserve their form and features for other times. 

It is well, then, that we pause amid the stirring scenes 
that provoke discussion and sometimes bitterness in this 
Hall, now shrouded with the drapery of mourning, to pay 
a just and fitting testimonial to him who was so long a 
member of this body and so recently its Presiding Officer. 

Henry "Wilson, though of obscure origin, neither 
learned nor eloquent, will justly stand in the history of our 
country as one of its remarkable men. Struggling under 
all the disadvantages of obscurity and poverty, and em- 
barrassed in a position wliich would have deten-ed most 



28 ADDRESS BY MR. HAMLIN ON THE 

men, step by step he advanced, until he occupied a seat 
in the Senate, and thence to the position of its Presiding 
Officer. No ordinary man could achieve that result ; and 
it furnishes a striking example which illustrates the the- 
ory of our Government, and it should, nay, it will, afford 
a stimulus to others in their exertions for worthy and hon- 
orable advancement. 

I became acquainted with Mr. Wilson when he took 
his seat in the Senate in February, 1855. I had known 
of him as a public man whom the State of Massachusetts 
had honored before that time, but I had not made his 
acquaintance personally until he came to be a Senator ; 
and from that time until his decease our relations were of 
the most intimate character. 

In running my eye over this body I find no Senator 
save myself who then occupied a seat on this floor. 

What shadows we are, .and what shadows wc pursue! 

It was one of the last statements made by the late Vice- 
President that more than eighty Senators with whom he 
had served had preceded him in death ; and for the im- 
pressive lesson which it teaches us I may, perhaps, be 
excused for saying that during the time that I have been 
connected with the Senate as a Senator and its Presiding 
Officer, more than one hundred and thirty persons with 
whom I have served and associated officially and person- 
ally as Senators have passed from earth. 

Here Mr. Wilson won the respect of all, and by his 
zeal and industry succeeded in establishing the reputation 



LrFE ANB CHARACTEE OF HENRY WILSON. J'J 

of a wise and able statesman. Statesman he may be 
called. It is statesmanship that achieves results which 
promote the best interests of the country, and that Mr. 
Wilson did. During the dark hours of the war, as chair- 
man of the Military Committee, his services were invalu- 
able in preparing and carrying through the Senate all 
measures for raising, equipping, and marshaling our 
armies in the field. He was quick to see the wants of the 
Government, and always prompt and ready to supply the 
remedy. The people of our country can hardly appreci- 
ate how much they are indebted to him for the f;xithful 
pei-foi-mance of the onerous duties that then devolved 
upon him, nor have I a doubt that the cause of that dis- 
ease to which his strong frame at last suiTendered can be 
traced to his excessive labors at that time. Of the valu- 
able services rendered by Senator Wilson during the 
short session of 18G1, General Scott paid him the high, 
compliment of saying, " He had done more work in that 
short session than all the chairmen of the Military Com- 
mittee had done for the last twenty years." It may with 
equal truth be said that his labors of that session were 
only a true index of subsequent and continued industry 
to the end. In the energy and untiring diligence with 
which he discharged every duty devolving upon him he 
had no superior in this body. To do right as he saw the 
right was his rule of action. Inured to toil from early 
life, to poverty, and to privation, he was a most fitting rep- 
resentative of the State which he honored in his position ; 



30 ADDRESS BY MR. HAMLIN ON THE 

and it often occuiTed to me during the long years thi-ough 
which he held a seat here his State was most appropriately 
represented in her two Senators, the one of its labor and 
the other of its learning. His life was devoted to the 
welfare and elevation of our people, morally, socially, 
and politically. His able vindication of the free laborers 
of the country when they were assailed and stigmatized 
as the mud-sills of society demonstrates his sympathy 
with those who toiled, and upon whose work rested the 
prosperity of the country and by which alone can its 
permanency be maintained. 

During his whole life he was an earnest and consistent 
advocate of temperance, which he made evident in his 
practical life, and was for several years president of the 
Congressional Temperance Society. The knowledge of 
the good works by him accomplished in this noble cause 
extends far beyond the limits of our country. 

The grand work of his life is to be found in his long 
and persistent efforts to break the shackles of the slave 
and let the oppressed go free. In the providence of God 
he lived to see the mighty work fulfilled; and for his effoits 
to this end, and in belialf of all the great measures to pre- 
serve the hfe of the nation, his name will be recorded in 
imperishable history, while millions will cherish his 
memory. He was a Christian gentleman, and his life was 
adorned by Christian virtues, and in honesty and integ- 
rity, even in times like these, he stood unassailed and 
unassailable. 

An honest man's the noblest work of God. 



LIFE AND CHAEACTEE OF HENEY WILSON. 



Address by Mr. Cragin, of New Wampshre. 



Mr. President, the emblems of mourning that darken 
this Chamber, and all the public buildings in this capital 
city, have reminded us for more than a month past that a 
man in high position, and one greatly loved by the people, 
has departed. One who had occupied a seat on this floor 
for more than twenty years as Senator and Vice-President 
was not here on the opening day of tliis session. He 
came here after the leaves had fallen, and a few weeks in 
advance of some of us, to be ready to enter anew upon 
his duties ; but the invisible angel of death came into this 
Capitol with him, and laying a cold hand upon the Vice- 
President claimed liim for the grave. A struggle of a few 
days' duration went on in a room near by this Chamber, 
and hope tantalized us all, but the insatiate conqueror who 
never knew defeat prevailed, and our friend was numbered 
with the dead. The form so long familiar to many of us 
is no longer seen among men ; the voice that has so often 
echoed along these gilded walls in earnest and eloquent 
tones of protest against wrong, and of sympathy for the 
lowly and oppressed, is hushed forever. Henry Wilson 
is dead ! And we set apart this day to crown his memory, 
and to honor his character and services. What has hap- 
pened to him is no uncommon thing, but rather the certain 



32 ADDRESS BY MB. CBAGIN ON THE 

and common lot of all mankind. The dead many times 
outnumber the living, and the living must all die. 

More than eighteen hundred years ago St. John 
described a great multitude of dead, "which no man 
could number." Tens of millions have been added every 
year since, till the imagination staggers in the attempt to 
comprehend the vast and constantly-increasing number 
who sleep in the valley of death. 

Tlie battle of our life is brief, 
The al.arm, the struggle, the relief; 
Tbeu sleep we side by side. 

]\Iy acquaintance with Mr. Wilson began more than 
twenty years ago, and I soon learned to respect and admire 
him for his many good qualities, both of head and heart. 
He was a good man, in that he cherished love for all man- 
kind and always obeyed the impulses of a kind and gen- 
erous nature. lie was not a great man in shining qualities, 
but he was great in real, solid qualities. He was great in 
honest, earnest purpose ; in sagacity, in practical knowl- 
edge, and common sense. He was powerful in the advo- 
cacy of truth and the rights of the people. He was a 
humane, sincere man, always leaning to the side of the 
weak and friendless. He always espoused the cause of 
the masses, and labored faithfully and earnestly for every- 
thing that tended to elevate the character and better the 
condition of his fellow-men. He instinctively scorned a 
mean action, and the man is not living or dead whom he 
ever intentionally wronged. A man's character, physical, 
mental, and moral, is molded largely by the climate, occu- 



LIPE AND CHAKACTEE OF HENRY WILSON. 33 

pation, society, and other circumstances of his early life. 
Our lamented friend was born in the obscure and humble 
walks of life, and his pathway through cliildhood and 
youth was one of extreme poverty and toil. He learned 
by bitter experience the trials and wants of the poor, and 
to the day of his death he was the true and trusted friend 
of the people. He labored with the farmer in tilling the 
soil, and with the mechanic in the workshop, and here he 
became learned in common things and laid the foundation 
for that wonderful common sense for which he was distin- 
guished. 

We have seen him here many years with a learned col- 
league whose mind was trained and filled with the thoughts 
of other men, and yet in practical abihty and common wis- 
dom, which comes to minds attentive to their own thoughts, 
he was more than the equal of Charles Sumner. His early 
life Avas not wholly given to physical toil ; his young mind 
was hungry for intellectual food, and found it to some ex- 
tent. A good friend loaned him books, and he read many 
after daylight had faded into night. But, after all, the 
great book from which he learned most was the book of 
nature — a book full of all knowledge, and one that no 
man has or ever can fully read or understand. This book 
is the work of the Infinite Author of creation, and is the 
fountain from which finite men gather materials for books 
and inspirations for thoughts. It is filled with the choicest 
poetry, music, prose, and the demonstration of all science 
and art. It is accessible alike to the rich and poor, and 



5 W 



34 ADDUESS BY MR. CRAGIN ON THE 

especially to the poor, and is to be found wide open in 
the field, in the forest, in the workshop, in the moving 
waters, in the singing of birds, in tlie habits of animals 
and the speech of men, in the earth below and the starry 
heavens above. Its language is universal, and he who 
can read it well and take in its great truths is not only a 
learned man but a Christian. 

In after life and through his long public career Mr. Wil- 
son was a student. He read and studied books, mostly 
of a practical kind, and closely observed men and things. 
He read less of poetry and fiction and more of liistory 
and biography. He was specially familiar v?kh the history 
of all great struggles for freedom and human rights in 
modem times, and became a prominent actor in the con- 
test that resulted in giving freedom to four million slaves 
and placing them upon the high plane of American citizen- 
ship. He was emphatically a self-made man, and, like 
most men who have come up under adverse circumstances, 
and to whom God has given great powers, he was a strong 
man. He was strong in simplicity, strong in sincerity, 
sti-ong in pm-ity, and strong in earnestness. He was clear 
in his convictions, and bold and effective in maintaining 
them. 

He was not an orator in the common understanding of 
that term, but he was a very able public speaker. He 
had the power to hold the attention of his hearers, and to 
carry conviction to their heads and hearts. This is the 
purpose and effect of true eloquence. He made many 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 35 

political speeches, and always with great effect. He 
never soared in imagination up among the stars to get lost 
in the " milky way," or strangled or bewildered his hearers 
in sentences a mile long. He spoke to the common 
understanding. He carried conviction by conviction. He 
jjleased by his candor and truthfulness even those who 
differed from him in opinion. He built upon facts, and 
the structure stood after the sound of his voice had ceased. 
He interested his hearers by the honest utterance and 
honest faith of an honest man. He believed what he said, 
and a zeal which only comes from devotion to truth kindled 
corresponding fires in the hearts of his hearers. His purity 
of character was a great element of his strength. He 
wore no garment to conceal a deformity, but he was sim- 
ple, plain, and honest in his every-day life. He was em- 
phatically one of the people, and he studied the wishes, 
the interests, and the condition of the toiling millions with 
a heart always in accord with them and with an honest 
purpose to serve them. He knew their mode of reasoning 
and their wants with wonderful accuracy ; he therefore 
became one of the best judges of popular feeling and 
popular demand in tliis country. 

It is inevitable that such a man should become a favorite 
of the people. They honored, loved, and trusted him. I 
never realized this so fully as when his dead body recentl}^ 
passed through the city of New York on its way to Massa- 
chusetts. I rode in the funeral procession from Jersey 
City to Madison Square, a distance of several miles, and 



ADDRESS BY MR. CBAGIN ON THE 



the sidewalks on each side of Broadway and all the sti-eets 
leading into that great thoroughfare, the steps, balconies, 
windows, and roofs of buildings along the whole line, 
were densely packed with people. The procession was 
late in starting, and many thousands had stood for an hour 
in the cold to see the body of the people's friend pass. I 
never before saw any sight like it, and it was proof of 
the affection and confidence of the people which could 
not be mistaken. It was estimated that more than two 
hundred thousand men, women, and childi'en witnessed 
the grand and solemn ceremony. It was agreed on all 
hands that nothing like this outpouring of the people had 
been seen in that city since the body of the lamented and 
immortal Lincoln passed to its final resting-place. 

IIeney Wilson was a native of New Hampshire, and 
her people were ever proud of him. I mingle my own 
personal grief with theirs on this solemn occasion, and de- 
plore the loss not only of his native State but of the whole 
nation in the death of this great and good man. I com- 
mend his character and noble example to the young men 
of my own and other States, in the hope that the Republic 
may long live through the intelligence of the people and 
a like patriotism, ability, and purity of its public men. 

Within a little more than three years four natives of 
New Hampshire who have made honorable places for them- 
selves in history have obeyed the summons which no man 
can resist, and gone the way of all the earth. The first 
in order of time was Horace Greeley, the great journalist. 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 37 

He never held any high official position, except a seat in 
the House of Representatives for a sliort time, but for a 
long- time he was the head of the leading newspaper of 
the land, and wielded a power and influence unequaled 
by that of any other man on the continent. His head and 
heart were both large, and the world is much better for 
his having Hved. Then Salmon P. Chase, Senator, gov- 
ernor. Secretary of the Treasury, and Chief- Justice of 
the United States, passed to his final home. His was an 
honorable career, and history will record his great deeds. 
Next fell John P. Hale, my immediate predecessor in this 
body. For sixteen years he was a member of the Senate, 
and displayed great powers of genius. I have not for- 
gotten, and the country will never forget, the time when 
he stood here, with Sumnei-, Seward, Chase, Wade, Wil- 
son, Collamer, and Foot, all champions of a great cause, 
the cause of liberty and human nghts. The last of the 
four to depart was Henry Wilson, the late Vice-President, 
Avhom we honor and moum to-day. No State can point 
to four nobler, purer, abler men who have served their 
country longer or better. 

Of all the Senators who occupied seats in this Chamber 
when I first entered here as a member, only five, including 
myself, remain. Two others Avho had been Senators be- 
fore that time soon returned again and are now members. 

Since the 4tli of March, 1865, I have served with one 
hundred and sixty-nine different Senators — ninety-eight 
of tliem are no longer here — and I recall twenty-five who 



ADDRESS BY MR. CRAGIN ON THE 



have passed over the dark stream of death. Such have 
been the changes in the membership of this body, and 
such the work of death among those who were or had been 
members, in ten short years. 

Every seventh man has closed his earthly record. So 
it has been, and so it must always be. 

Ever since the world began the lessons of death have 
been taught. Man is here to-day and gone to-morrow. 

Our brief journey here ends in the tomb, but fixith points 
to eternal life beyond. 

Art is long, and Time is fleeting, 
And onr hearts, though stout and brave, 

Still, like muffled drums, are beating 
Funeral marches to the grave. 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 



Address by Mr. Cameron, of Pennsyh 



Mr. President, the memoiy of a man dying in posses- 
sion of a great place, endowed witli high mental force, 
true to his convictions of right, and earnest in the discharge 
of duty, is a study which always commands respect and 
honor; and such a man was the late Vice-President. Of 
his devotion to his principles it may be truthfully said that 
this began at a period, and was displayed on a theater, 
where it required more than ordinary enthusiasm to keep 
the devotee unfaltering, and more than the average courage 
to keep him finn. But in his long public career no evi- 
dence occurs to insinuate that Heney Wilson lacked either 
the enthusiasm or the courage for his work; and that is 
saying much. But that which makes his pathway in life 
most interesting to me is the humbleness of his origin, the 
energy he displayed in raising himself to a higher level 
of life, and the blessed suiTOundings which enabled the 
poor, unfriended, but ambitious lad to mount from his 
native obscurity to the second place in the civil magistracy 
of a republic of forty millions of free, enlightened, and 
discriminating people. Of the earlier straggles and the 
cruel sufferings of his youth those who know intimately 
their particulars have spoken, and it is an important matter. 

My knowledge of the dead Vice-President began after 



40 ADDRESS BY MB. CAMKRON ON THE 

all these had been successfully overcome and passed. 
And I speak only of the acts of his vigorous prime and 
his public life. In the hotly- contested slavery agitation 
he was known, not as the earliest champion of universal 
freedom, but as the product of that determined polemical 
war that surged about him in his youth. His political bonds 
and party predilections were not strong enough to keep 
the natural enthusiasm of the young man in leading- 
stiings; for, breaking away from these, he followed the 
dictates of his conscience rather than the teachings of mere 
political leaders. And so he came to this Senate the un- 
compromising representative of a cause many — j^^rhaps a 
majority — of his supporters did not consider of primary 
importance at the time they concentrated their votes to 
send him to Washington. Like his great colleague, he 
was chosen a Senator because the moving forces of that 
avalanche both did so much to precipitate had already 
divided the minds of men in both the old political parties 
in New England, so that neither could concentrate on men 
who opposed or ignored free-soil and its consequence, the 
abolition of slavery. Whether the coalition that sent 
Henry Wilson to the Senate knew precisely what sort 
of man they were choosing, I cannot tell. But if they 
did not, then they builded wiser than they knew. He 
entered into the war of opinions like a true knight, and 
fought gallantly and faithfully. 

As time wore on the great issue came to a head. The 
civil war broke on the land, and all political barriers were 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 41 

broken down for a time. Called on to take a somewhat 
active part in that tremendous struggle, I found it a matter 
of profound interest to study the characters of the public 
men on whose fortitude and steady devotion the successful 
prosecution of the war for the Union depended; for by 
the laws of Congress, passed to strengthen the liands of 
the Administration, only could the Administration act. 
And in that anxious penetration to discover uncompromis- 
ing supporters, the late Vice-President was quickly set 
down as one in whom there was "no shadow of turning." 
In eveiy measure designed to bring back peace by the only 
methods then possible to us, Mr. Wilson uplield the execu- 
tive authority with an eager industry which left him no 
time for criticism or carping. 

The first reverse to our arms caused many to pause, and 
some to doubt and fear. The answer fi'om Henry Wilson 
to that disaster was a request by him to the then Secretary 
of War for authority to raise a regiment for three years. 
This was eagerly given. And in a very brief time a 
splendid body of men came marching along Pennsylvania 
avenue, as thoroughly armed and equipped as any regi- 
ment the world ever saw. His influence, seconded by 
the tireless energy of Grovernor John A. Andrew, supplied 
this excellent force; and then the colonel laid down his 
commission to resume his seat in the Senate, where his 
best services could be given to the countiy, leaving his 
second officer to lead the regiment in the field — a work 
for whicli he was especially fitted and carefully chosen. 



42 ADDRESS BY MR. CAMERON ON THE 

What followed is a part of the history of the nation Henry 
Wilson so steadfastly loved. His patriotic constituents 
again returned him to this body. And then the country 
demanded of Massachusetts the son she had delighted to 
honor, that he might be yet further exalted. The grateful 
Republic placed him at the head of the body in which his 
life had been so useful and so honorable. And now we 
turn aside from the cares and duties of the hour to record, 
however feebly and imperfectly, our ti-ibutes to his patri- 
otism, his devotion, his courage, and his purity. The 
patriot has gone to his reward, and we may gather lessons 
of wisdom from his successful and useful life. 



LIFE AKD CHAUACTEK OF HENRY WILSON. 



Address by ^Ar. yVlorrill, of y^ 



Mr. President, Henry Wilson was early removed from 
parental guidance, but he fortunately possessed a resolute 
will and a sober sense of duty, which led to the pursuit 
of that course of life which to him, bound to hard labor, 
seemed best, and which promised the most advantages to 
the growth of a young man whose habits had not been 
rooted in the precious memories of home example, and 
whose culture, in the land of schools, had been conspicu- 
ously omitted. His curiosity for reading appears to have 
been veiy early aroused and to some extent gi'atified, 
though in a desultory manner. The story of man in all 
ages, of peace and war, of liberty and despotism, of civ- 
ilization and barbarism, and of his own relations to his 
Maker and to his fellow-men, engaged his attention, and 
thus, while yet in obscurity, he laid the foundations for 
leadership among men upon the broad principles of dem- 
ocratic equality and upon the living sentiment of universal 
lumian liberty, which subsequently won for him national 
renown. 

The late Vice-President belonged to the class of men 
most commonly described as self-educated, which, in this 
instance, as in many others, means that he had been 
endowed by natm-e with something more than a moderate 



44 ADDRESS BY MB. MOEKILL, OF VERMONT, ON THE 

share of brain-power, energetically supported by bone and 
muscle, but had received in his youth little or no artificial 
aid from schools. Of this outfit, however, he wasted 
nothing. Shunning no labor, his stock of useful infor- 
mation was ever increasing. It is no slender encomium 
upon Henry Wilson that, as the successor here of the 
most classic orator of New England, of one who might 
have been called the finished product of culture and 
learning, he filled the place of Senator so well that he was 
never humiliated by unfavorable comparisons; and, what- 
ever his deficiencies of scholastic learning may have been, 
his merits as a man and Senator were so plainly to be seen 
that Massachusetts, not ^vithout other ambitious resources, 
fom- times returned him to this body as the right man in 
the right place. With a long term still before him here, 
at the command of the nation he took the higher seat of 
Vice-President. 

Henry Wilson loved his whole race, and served the 
race next to his God. He sought their acquaintance — 
their approbation — and, Avhen elevated himself to higli 
positions, gladly mixed with common people, opening to 
them a great heart full of symjDathy, and they admired 
and loved him in return. Rising from the mechanic's 
bench, and as much as St. Paul the master of a trade, he 
respected labor, and laborers first saluted him with honors. 
He spoke to them and for them, and they were proud of 
him. If he exalted their destiny, he did not refrain from 
exposing their laults. If they were intemperate, he 



LIPE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 45 

denounced not them, but intemperance. If they were 
idle, he set them an example of unflagging industry. If 
they were laboinng for stinted wages, he urged employers 
to a more equitable division of profits. If they were 
illiterate, he showed how some knowledge could be gained 
by the evening blaze of tallow candles and by the light 
which breaks through the crevices of the early morning. 
Wlien he lashed slavery, he had at the same time pity for 
the slave-holder as well as the slave. When he lauded 
freedom, he failed not to count the cost, and knew that it 
could only be sustained by an increased demand on the 
\'irtue and intelligence of both nilers and people. 

In his speeches he never was betrayed into any ambi- 
tious use of language, and seldom decorated anything 
with borrowed scraps. It was enough if he was squarely 
understood; but he was ambitious to set forth such facts 
as would sui-ely find a lodgment in the hearts of his 
hearers, and he never grew weary in the utterance of 
generous sentiments in behalf of the poor and lowly. 

In politics he belonged to the party of movement, and 
believed nothing politically nght which to him seemed 
morally wrong, or that was susceptible of improvement. 
He would have men in high places teach by example. 
His patriotism was of the broadest character and always 
ablaze, and for those who had served their country as 
soldiers or sailors there were no wages too high, no pen- 
sions not earned, and no bounties undeserved. 

Henry Wilson was not a philosopher thoughtfully 



46 ADDRESS BY MR. MORRILL, OF VERMONT, ON THE 

guided by profound research and unyielding logic, nor a 
wit who surprised and captivated his hearers with brilliant 
thoughts, nor was he eminent in any special branch of 
knowledge, and it cost him very little to change his 
opinion in matters of mere expediency if he found himself 
in error, or if he found later and better supports for a dif- 
ferent opinion ; but when once fully identified with any 
measure of principle, or with any matter that touched the 
tender sensibilities of his heart., he never deserted it, and 
had all the courage required to lead even a forlorn hope. 
If he was incapable of great essays on gi-eat subjects, he 
never lacked enthusiasm in a great cause, nor the will in 
such a cause to offer himself as "the man of all work," 
and he came to the front in shaping and pushing forward 
events. He was not only the earnest adherent of all 
measures for the advancement of the welfare of mankind, 
but he made his earnestness contagious. He was for 
thirty-five years conversant with public men and public 
affairs, and this gave elevation to his character and dig- 
nity to his career. He quickly fathomed the general 
sentiment of the public, and knew how to organize suc- 
cess. Officially he hardly aspired to be great, or to shine 
in the routine discharge of his duties, but as ever-stirring 
Henry Wilson he was great; great in his confiding sim- 
plicity, his homespun integrity, his unbounded love of 
country, and his knowledge of men and their opinions. 
True, he sought office, but not for its trappings and emol- 
vmients; he sought it because he honestly believed, with 



LIFE AND CHAEACTEB OF HENEY WILSON. 47 

the leverage of power to be obtained, he could be useful 
to his country, and seldom has the country been called to 
mourn the loss of a more unselfish public servant, a more 
courageous champion of human rights, or a more devoted 
lover of his country. 

He was on the side of those who won in the contest for 
the emancipation of a race, and the result marks the age 
and satisfies a Christian world ; but he never exulted over 
those who lost, and can-ied no trophies of the contest in 
his belt and no unspent anger in his bosom. All he asked 
was that no step backward should be taken, and that free- 
men should have the rights of freemen. 

Little qualified as he might be supposed to have been 
for the work of a historian, yet, having selected the great 
theme of "The Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in 
America," he fortunately was able here to concentrate his 
life-thoughts and to marshal the large aiTay of facts which 
had long crowded his memory, or which he gathered with 
tireless industry, in so creditable a manner, so full and so 
fair, as possibly to make this, though left incomplete, the 
most prominent work of his life, and the one which may 
serve longest to perpetuate his memory and give the most 
enduring luster to his name. 

He was a peace-maker. Careful himself not to give 
ofi"ense, he was pained when any sti-ife arose among his 
associates, and made haste to obtain, if possible, explana- 
tions leading to a restoration of harmony and good-will. 
If successful, he at least was made happy. He was not 



48 ADDRESS BY MK. MOKRILL, OP VERMONT, ON THE 

ashamed of his poverty, and yet never failed to dilate 
with pride upon the amplitude of the wealth of his native 
land. He died poor, but rich in the greatest of estates — 
the affections of his countrymen. 

Senators, we are witnesses that all of his capabilities, 
whether of natui-e or nurture, were ever actively em- 
ployed — no fragment of his strength nor of liis time ran 
to waste. If, as it occurs to most busy public men travel- 
ing toward the undiscovered country, his tired hand left 
unfinished some share of his projected work, we know he 
passed away in full faith that he was summoned to higher 
work, and, whatever he might here leave unwritten, that 
he would find his own name in the Book of Life wiitten 
by a hand divine. 



LIFE AND CnAKACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 



Address by Mr. Stevenson, of Kentucky. 



Mr. President, I have listened with interest to tlie elo- 
quent tributes of respect to the memory of the distin- 
guished dead which have been offered by the Senators 
who have preceded me. From their stand-point, little 
could be added to their pathos, to their beauty, or to 
their justice; and yet, I should feel that my duty were 
but half performed, if I did not on this occasion, tender to 
the i)eople of Massachusetts, the heartfelt sympathy and 
condolence of the Commonwealth of Kentucky upon the 
sad bereavement, which, in removing from our midst the 
Vice-President of the United States, deprives that ven- 
ei-able Commonwealth of one of her most distinguished 
sons. 

The Hfe of Henry Wilson is full of instruction. It is 
wonderful in its incidents; it is novel in its results. His 
success is a just and beautiful commentary on American 
institutions. It is an example of their excellence; it un- 
folds their beneficence ; it illustrates most grandly their 
equality. 

Self-exertion was the key to his success. He was 
born in obscurity amid the wilds and snows of New 
Hampshire. Without friends, without influence, extreme 



50 ADDRESS BY MR. STEVENSON ON THE 

poverty forced him at an early age into close compan- 
ionship with the manual tillage of New Hampshire's 
sterile soil. He was cheerful, healthy, contented, and 
industrious. His early years were spent in the Spartan 
simplicity and purity of New England Hfe. Without 
books, he coveted knowledge. That very want created 
the independence of thought which afterward became 
so prominent an element in his life. Self-wrought, self- 
rehant, Henry Wilson was molded in that massive type 
of New Hampshire manhood, of which Woodbury, and 
Chase, and Webster were the grander and more conspicu- 
ous exemplars. 

Subsequently, agricultural labor was exchanged for 
the manufacture of shoes. In 18.")5, by self-culture, 
industry, and study, the shoemaker of Massachusetts 
became the Senator of that Commonwealth in tliis 
Chamber of Equals. Seventeen years later, and the 
humble cobbler of Natick was called by the people to 
become Vice-President of the United States. What a 
struggle ! What an issue ! What a triumph ! What in- 
centives to virtuous and lofty exertion do the incidents of 
his hfe hold out to the industrious and friendless youth 
thi-oughout the length and breadth of this vast land! 
And, as homage is paid to vhtue, as an incentive to its 
cultivation, how just, how meet, how proper, that the 
good, the great, and the noble should be honored and 
their names preserved ! 

This is not the time, nor am I the person to enter into 



LIFE AND CHAUACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 51 

the consideration of the pubHc cliaracter and political 
services of the late Vice-President, interwoven as they 
have been with the history of ovir country during a period 
of intense sectional excitement, including, too, within its 
range, a gigantic, bloody civil war. He was, in my judg- 
ment, more of an enthusiast and of a politician, than of 
a clear, philosophical, well-balanced statesman. Human 
liberty to him seemed an exti-avagant day-dream! Its 
very excess, without limitation, without restriction, in 
violation of law, was an accomplishment earnestly, con- 
stantly, and most sincerely desired 

Could Henry Wilson have known it, there were states- 
men in southern portions of the old thirteen States, who, 
could they have willed it, would have removed slavery. 
There were others in the State in wdiich he was born, and 
that in which he lived, and where he now sleeps, who 
also would have rejoiced to see slavery extii-pated. But 
these wise men would have regulated that removal by 
law. They would have taken no step which did not find 
its sanction in the Constitution. Such men were part 
and parcel of that band whose valor won our liberty, 
and whose wisdom sought its preservation under a sys- 
tem of constitutional self-government, binding into a 
common brotherhood, thirteen sovereign States, with their 
diverse domestic institutions, and varied interests, under 
one common government for mutual defense, protection, 
and external intercoiu-se, but leaving each State free and 
unrestricted, under its separate constitution, to manage 



ADDRESS BY MR. STEVENSON ON THE 



and regulate its own internal polity. Such was the Union 
born of the Revolution and ordained by the Constitu- 
tion of the United States. 

But I forbear. The life, public character, and services 
of Henry Wilson will be upon another occasion intrusted 
to other hands. Be mine the poor privilege to-day to speak 
only of traits in the character of the dead which commanded 
my admiration, and which, now that he is gone, I shall 
love to dwell upon with melancholy pleasure. 

I knew Hknry Wilson for eighteen years. When I 
entered the House of Representatives in 1857, he had 
but a short time before, taken his seat in this Chamber. My 
intercourse with him was then formal but friendly. When 
I subsequently entered the Senate in 1871, he received 
me with a kindness and cordiality which I can never 
forget. The official conduct of Mr. Wilson was always 
unexceptionable. As a Senator, he was dignified, m-bane, 
kind, and respectful. As its Presiding Officer, he was just, 
honest, and impartial, and sought always to do right. No 
man could have been more simple and unostentatious 
in his tastes, or, as it seemed to me, more self-denying 
and frugal in his life. But it is just to say, that my 
intercourse with Vice-President Wilson extended only to 
public and personal intercourse within these halls. I never 
followed him into those closer circles of domestic life 
where all the virtues and all the affections of the human 
heart blossom and entwine themselves around the loved 
ones who constitute the charmed circle of home. So far 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 5.'} 

as I know — so far as I believe — he was ujiinght, virtuous, 
temperate, just, and, in the latter part of his public career, 
when the meridian heats of party strife had given way to 
those autumnal and clearer tints of life's declining sun, 
his heart seemed to expand, and, as he more than once 
told me, its love embraced every section of his entire 
country. He said he was tired of the strife, discord, and 
sectional alienation with which the Congress of the United 
States had of late so much abounded. 



But, Mr. President, he is gone — gone from us for 



•ever! 



He died suddenly. He died in the Capitol. He died 
with the harness on. His sun went down without a cloud 
upon its disk. Its last rays were clear, bright, and tran- 
quil. His spirit, we would fain hope, intrepid and unter- 
rified, resting with faith upon its Saviour and upon its God, 
was borne safely through the dark valley of the shadow 
of death. Peace, then, to his ashes ! 

Senators, death, it seems to me, of late years has been 
entering oftener and more frequently into this Chamber. 
Year by year its monitory messages addressed to our frail 
individual lurmanity come oftener and come quicker. But 
they all bear the same solemn, unwelcome truth — 

The paths of glory lead but to the grave I 



ADDUKSS BY MU. INGALLS ON TUB 



Address by Mr. Tngalls, of Kansas. 



Mr. President, it has been common to allude to the his- 
tttry of men like Henry Wilson as peculiarly American, 
and to declare that such careers are possible only under 
republican institutions. Nothing could be further from 
the truth. The world has had few leaders who Avere born 
to an inheritance of power. Its real kings have not been 
the sons of kings. Its acknowledged monarchs have not 
descended from monarchs. The founders of its philoso- 
phies have not been the children of philosophers, nor of 
its dynasties the heirs of emperors. The framers of the 
creeds, the inventors of the faiths and religions of the hu- 
man race, have come from the manger, the forge, the car- 
penter's bench, and not from the church. The great 
leaders of its amiies have not sprung from wamors ; and 
those who have written the di-amas and pronounced the 
orations that are immortal have inherited neither their pas- 
sion nor their eloquence. A pedigree may be gratifying 
to pride but it is not consoling to ambition. 

The choicest products of nature are developed in her 
valleys, and not on her summits; and in the lower social 
strata we find the origin of the most successful men. 

In the profession of public affairs or statecraft, it may 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 55 

be that the operation of this universal law is more ap- 
parent under a political system like ours, where the hard 
restrictions and limitations of custom, precedent, and con- 
vention do not prevail ; but our history gives ample illus- 
tration of its truth. To discriminate among the living 
would be ungracious, but if we inquire who among the 
illustrious servants of the Republic in the past have most 
ineffaceably stamped their ideas and purposes upon the 
institutions and irrevocably shaped the destinies of tlie 
nation, the answer would designate those who had not 
been favored by bii-th or fortune. Jackson and Lincoln 
among the Presidents, Webster, Clay, and Douglas among 
the statesmen, are imperishably associated with the first 
century of the Republic. Emerging from an obscurity 
more profound than either of these, and reaching an ele- 
vation that gives him a permanent position in our history, 
Hi;xRY Wilson demands to-day the last formal recogni- 
tion and tribute tliat his country can extend to his acts 
and his fame. 

The story of his life has been told by his successor, 
whose powerful delineation of his character and services 
has left nothing to be recounted save the lessons of his 
marvelous career. 

It is perhaps not too much to say that he succeeded less 
in spite of his disadvantages than because of them. The 
defects of his training and scholarship, the laborious pov- 
erty of his youtli, the humble avocations of his early 
manhood, were favorable to his fortunes. They kept him 



5G ADDRESS BY MR. INGALLS ON THE 

on a level with the masses of the people and enabled him 
to inteqjret their purposes with prophetic accuracy. It 
was by reason of this that he became a popular orator 
Avithout being eloquent, that he became a voluminous 
author without the advantages of preliminary education, 
that the men of Massachusetts ignored their patricians and 
sent the Natick cobbler to the Senate, and finally to die 
in the Capitol of the nation. 

He possessed in an eminent degree that peculiar assem- 
blage of physical, mental, and moral qualities that are 
requisite to political success in a popular government. He 
was from and of the people pre-eminently; not alienated 
from them by extraordinary endowments or great wealth 
or superior cultm-e, but exhibiting only a higher degree or 
a more vigorous activity of the virtues and powers that 
are common among men; industry, diligence, patience, 
and scrupulous integrity. So that the great body of 
citizens in supporting him seemed to be indirectly paying 
a tribute of respect to themselves, and not yielding either 
a Avilling or reluctant obedience to a superior or ruler. 

But no public man, whatever may be his qualifications, 
can succeed unless he identifies himself with some idea or 
conviction existing in the minds of the people. He who 
would lead must follow. And in this respect the Vice- 
President was especially fortunate. He entered public 
life at the commencement of that great revolt of the na- 
tional conscience against human slavery, and thenceforth 
he devoted all his energies to its extinction. He became 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. iti 

one of the great exponents and representatives of this 
idea. It gave form, substance, and complexion to all his 
efforts. He mastered its statistics, defined its purposes, 
and in the great contest that followed he bore a notable 
and conspicuous part. He gave expression to the resolve 
of the loyal millions that in the country of Washington 
the creed of human liberty should not be an unmeaning 
formula nor the brotherhood of man an empty dream. 
This the measure of his work and its reward. 



ADDRESS BY MR. BOGY ON THE 



Address by Mr. Bogy, of Missouri. 



Mr. President, I met Mr. Wil.son for the first time in 
March, 1873, when he administered to me the oath as a 
Senator. A few days afterward I called on him at his 
lodgings to pay him my respects, and a short time after 
this he returned me the visit. This was the extent of our 
intercourse, besides exchanging a few friendly words on 
the floor of this body. I therefore cannot claim to have 
known him personally very well ; but his history as a pub- 
lic man is not unknown to me, ahd it is in this character 
that I desire to speak of him on this occasion His career 
was certainly very remarkable, and both suggestive and 
instructive. He was born in New Hampsliire, but it is as 
a child of the old State of Massachusetts that he is known 
to the world. We are informed that he was bora in the 
humblest station and had no advantages of early educa- 
tion, compelled at the outset of life to learn a trade so as 
to earn his livelihood. 

The State in which his lot was cast is known for its 
wealth, social refinement, high education ; for its numer- 
ous men of distinction in all the professions, and also for 
its large number of distinguished public characters, many 
of whom have been known to the country as men of the 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 5'J 

most exalted abilities. It was among svich men and in 
such a society and under such circumstances that he 
had to make his way, from way down, up to fame and to 
distinction, and yet he successfully secured both. Was 
this the result of accident, of wiiat is vulgarly called luck, 
or was it the reward of great intellectual gifts'? It was 
neither. Mere luck will not secure such a prize. Yet 
there must have been sometliing in his character to have 
enabled him to accomplish what he did accomplish. Luck 
or favorable circumstances alone will accomplish nothing. 
But the existence of favorable circumstances, which 
exist at some time or other for all men, in all countries, in 
all ages, and under all forms of government, wisely and 
intelligently understood and firmly and with a fixed pur- 
pose taken advantage of, will lead to fame or fortune as 
may be desired. Men of action — I mean by this that class 
of men who acquire either political or military fame — never 
have acquired or ever can acquire distinction without fa- 
vorable circumstances. "Washington would have lived as 
an intelligent and good fanner in Virginia, and never have 
been known to the world without the circumstance of the 
American Revolution; yet this circumstance was not of his 
creation. It may be safely said that other men did more 
at the outset to bring it about than he did ; yet he wisely 
took advantage of it, and it enabled him to secure a name 
and fame Avithout a parallel in the world. So it may be 
said of Cromwell. Without the English revolution he 
would have died unknown ; yet, taking advantage of it, 



ADDRESS BY MR. BOGY ON THE 



he ruled not only the destinies of England but of Europe, 
and, indeed, of the world for a time. So it may be said of 
Napoleon. Without the French revolution, with the be- 
ginning of which he was in no way connected, he would 
have lived and died on the island of Corsica ; yet, the cir- 
cumstance of this great uprising of the French people 
occurring, he took advantage of it, and he too for a time 
ruled the destinies of his country and of Europe, and 
acquired a name for military genius and broad statesman- 
ship unequaled by any one in any age of the world. 

The circumstance which presented itself to Mr. Wilson 
was the slavery question. He saw, as he believed — and, 
as events have turned out, he did so with a remarkable 
prescience — that it would become the great question of his 
day, particularly in his section. He early identified him- 
self with it, and as it acquired strength and popularit}^ he 
rose with it. Showing at the outset an intelligent com- 
prehension of the question, and exhibiting purpose and 
firmness to rise or fall with it, its success was his success; 
and so it may be said of the three great characters first 
mentioned. Had the great events with which they had 
linked their destinies failed, they, too, would have failed. 

Thus, Mr. President, it is seen that it is not mere bril- 
liant genius and high intellectual endowments which secure 
the largest prizes in fame's lottery; but purpose, will, man- 
hood, courage, all presided over by inteUigence, although 
this intelligence may be infinitely below that of Lord 
Bacon. Hence I say that the life of Mr. Wilson is in- 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. Gl 

structive to the millions of poor and obscure boys, how- 
ever humble, who are scattered throughout this broad land, 
and surely none can start from a humbler position than he 
did; and as he attained fame and distinction, and died 
holding the second office in this Government, to which he 
had been called by a majority of his countrymen, why 
may not many other poor and obscure boys do the same 1 
They need not fear the want of favorable circumstances ; 
they in some shape or under some peculiar condition exist 
always in each and every generation. 

Our epoch will be marked in history for having given 
birth to three men, each one of whom was boi-n in such 
lowly condition as to be nearly beyond the power of full 
realization. Yet one of these men became by election the 
President of this countr}-, and the two others were elected 
to the second highest office — Lincoln, Johnson, and Wil- 
son — all contemporaries, all in public life at the same time. 
Many years ago, in a debate in the House of Representa- 
tives, some one said that General Jackson had no educa- 
tion. Mr. Randolph, of Roanoke, replied that this perhaps 
was true, but that Jackson knew how to make his mark. 
So it may be said of these three men ; they had no edu- 
cation, or, at least, no perfect education, being all self- 
taught, but each and all have made their mark in indelible 
characters upon the pages of our history. 

This occasion is suggestive to me of another great fact— 
the march of empire, the spread of our grand system of 
free government, which opens its portals wide and broad 



b2 ADDRESS BY MR. BOGY ON THE 

to all the youths of this countr}'^, regardless of the advan- 
tages of family, wealth, or high social position. Mr. Wil- 
son was a child of New England. At the time of his 
birth, my native State, which I in part have the honor to 
represent on this floor, was the outboundary of the Re- 
public, the home of a few French Canadians, whose fore- 
fathers had penetrated more than a hundred years before 
the vast wilderness of the West as hunters and trappers — 
the true pioneers of the valley of the Mississippi. Mis- 
souri was then in what is known as the first grade of ter- 
ritorial goverament, and had within its extended boundaries 
less than thii-ty thousand inhabitants. Now it has a popu- 
lation of two millions. The secret of this rapid growth, 
this vast extension, is to be found in the beneficent sys- 
tem of republican government, which tells in language 
not to be mistaken to all the youths of this country, the 
rich and the poor, the high and the low, the perfectly edu- 
cated and the self-educated, that the rewards and honors 
of the great Republic belong to all, and will be awarded 
to the most meritorious. Like the contest in the garden 
of the Hesperides, the race is open to all — Athenians, 
Spartans, Boeotians, and Macedonians. He who shall 
prove the swifter in the race will secure the golden apple. 
Mr. President, in conclusion I will say that it is my na- 
ture — perhaps the effect of the circumstances which sur- 
rounded my own early life in the wilderness of the West, 
among the rugged but honest and brave pioneers of that 
country — to entertain a profound admiration for such 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. l)J 

chai-acters as Lincoln, Johnson, and Wilson — men who 
were the architects of their own fortunes, and who rehed 
alone on their own brave hearts and strong anns and a 
beneficent Government for the fame and name which they 
achieved. 



ADDRESS BY MR. MORTON ON THE 



Address by Mr. Morton, of Indiana. 



Mr. Pi-esident, I have had no time or opportunity to 
prepare a fitting eulogy; and I can only utter those 
thoughts that are uppermost in my mind in regard to 
Henry Wilson. He was a man of very marked charac- 
teristics, and his public career in some respects stands out 
from all the statesmen of his day. Born in poverty, as 
has been said, having no advantages of early education, 
without riches and influential friends to push him forward 
in the world, he was the architect of his own fortunes, and 
it may be said in a very peculiar sense he fought his bat- 
tles alone. He had no partisans. He cared little for 
public patronage; but he relied upon the strength of pub- 
lic opinion and the principles which he advocated. His 
great strength was in his convictions. He was a man of 
ideas, and relied upon ideas for his success. He was a 
man of courage. He dared to follow his convictions 
wherever they led him, and he was brave enough to refuse 
to fight a duel in this capital at a time when the spirit of 
dueling ruled here and heaped ridicule upon every man 
who refused to acknowledge the "code." 

The world will acknowledge hereafter that Henry 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 05 

Wilson was right upon all great questions affecting human 
liberty and the progress of the age. His political career 
was cast at a time when there was more attention paid to 
the discussion of the fundamental principles of our Gov- 
ernment and the rights of man than to mere economic 
questions ; and it was in the consideration of such ques- 
tions that he derived his fame. He was not a man of 
brilliant or showy talents, but he was a man of great 
talents, if we can judge by results accomplished. Many 
acquire reputation for great talents who never achieve 
anything; but Henry Wilson, without having that repu- 
tation, did achieve great results. 

He was essentially a practical man. I was associated 
with him on this floor for six years as a Senator, and 
during all that time I never knew him to advertise an 
effort ; I never knew him to speak for the applause of the 
galleries. He spoke only to convince the Senate and to 
accomplish the purpose he had in view. But, sir, it is 
doubtful whether any man of his time had more influence 
upon public opinion than had Henry Wilson. The 
country had confidence in his devotion. He was right 
upon the great questions, and the country will come to 
beheve that. He was a quarter of a centmy in advance 
of his time. 

There is one respect in which the character of Henry 
Wilson as a statesman will stand out from the men of his 
time, and that is as the representative of the workingmen. 
Of humble origin, brought up to labor, all his sjinpa- 



ADDRESS BY ME. MOETON ON THE 



tines were identified with that class of our countrymen. 
Respecting scrupulously the rights of property and of 
capital, yet it was always his purpose and seemed to be 
his aim to elevate the laboring men. He desired their 
education, and sought in every way in his power to alle- 
viate their condition, both male and female. 

His life was somewhat lonely, especially the last years 
of it, going into society sometimes, but never fondly. He 
preferred his studies, and his great object was to complete 
the work upon which he was engaged, "The Rise and Fall 
of the Slave Power." He did not quite succeed in that 
purpose. Had he been spared a few months, perhaps a 
few weeks longer, the work would have been finished. I 
have frequently heard him speak of it fondly, and of his 
great desire to complete it. He wanted to leave that as 
the literary record of his life. 

He was kind-hearted. I believe he never entertained 
malice. I do not remember that I ever heard him speak 
iinkindly of any one, and while earnestly maintaining the 
Union and zealous in suppressing the rebellion, he seemed 
to entertain no malice toward the men who originated the 
rebellion and carried it on. He seemed to believe his 
work was done when slavery was abolished and the rebel- 
lion was suppressed. Taking a deep interest in recon- 
struction, he seemed to believe that that was a thing to 
follow as a matter of course, and that victory was won in 
the destruction of slavery aud suppression of the rebellion. 

A man of simple character, utterly indifferent to dis- 



LIPE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. (J7 

play, and seemingly indifferent to fame, yet undoubtedly 
keenly alive to the good opinion of his countrymen, he 
has left behind him a memory that ought to be cherished, 
and, as has just been said, he is an example to the youth 
of our country of what can be accomplished by sound 
sense, by industry, by patient devotion to study. 

He was emphatically a self-made man. No man this 
country has ever produced was more clearly entitled to 
that distinction. As I before said, he fought his battles 
almost alone; he fought without those aids that often 
elevate men to power and distinction. He has won a 
great name that will grow brighter and brighter as time 
passes on 

I cherished for him a wann friendship. I met him first 
ill 185">, in the State of Indiana. It was about the first 
appearance I had made in the poUtical field. A public 
meeting was held in the city of Indianapohs on the occa- 
sion of the anniversary of the ordinance of 1787 ; I think 
it was on the 13th of July. I heard him make a speech 
there, and it was my pri\alege to follow him in a short 
address, and he spoke to me on that day words of kind- 
ness and of encouragement that I shall never forget. A 
friendship began then which grew stronger and stronger 
until he was taken away. I shall personally revere and 
cherish the memory of Henry Wilson, and so, I believe, 
will all who knew him well. 



ADDRESS BY MB. ANTHONY ON THE 



Address by Mr. Anthony, of Rhode Island. 



Mr. President, it was well said by my friend from Ken- 
tucky that the life of Henry Wilson fomis a chapter of 
American history full of instruction ; it is full of cheerful 
instruction, full of hope to languid patriotism, full of 
encouragement to ingenuous }'outh. In his desolate and 
unprotected childhood, in the early struggles through 
which his faculties developed into strength and his virtues 
hardened into consistency, in the steadfast purpose and 
the gi-eat results of his manhood, we have an illustration 
and a vindication of free institutions. "With no advan- 
tages of birth or connection, he outstripped, in the career 
of life, those who started with him in the enjoyment 
of them all. The strength that he acquu'ed in overcoming 
obstacles that friendly hands had removed from the paths 
of others enabled him to meet, with greater vigor, those 
obstacles which every man must encounter for himself. 
Without assistance, at the age when assistance is most 
needed, with little sympathy, till he had won a position 
that made him independent of it, he raised himself to the 
second place in the Repviblic, and, in the minds of many, 
was designated for the first. 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. h'J 

I do not purpose to delineate liis character, or to recount 
the story of his life. I should only repeat what has been 
better said, here and elsewhere, by those to whom the 
grateful duty was most appropriate. lilnough that, in an 
age too much devoted to the pursuit of Avealth, he can-ied 
his contempt for money to a fault; that in a time when 
the luxuriousness of private hfe had invaded the purity and 
threatened the safety of society, he preserved the simple 
habits that best become a republican magistrate; that as he 
had borne adversity without munnuring and with uncon- 
querable detei-mination, so he bore success with modera- 
tion; and that, in all his high employments, the possession 
of power never provoked him to insolence in the exercise 
of it. I will not adduce, among the evidences of his 
merit, that his personal character mainly escaped calumny, 
for the best men in public life are not the least vilified, 
and political malignity seeks not the justice but the occa- 
sion of assault. But even that malignity could find httle 
upon which to fasten its fangs in one whose chief use for 
money was to give it to others, and whose only use of 
power was for the public good. 

Nor was the occasion of his death inappropriate to his 
life. It has been lamented that the inevitable hour found 
him away from his home, and without the tender ministra- 
tions of woman. In this regret I do not share. Where 
should the patriot' warrior die, rather than on the field of 
battle or on the slippery deck, with the flag of his country 
victorious over him? Where should the patriot statesman 



70 ADDRESS BY MR. ANTHONY ON THE 

whose life lias been devoted to freedom die, rather than 
in the Capitol, whose uplifted Dome bears aloft the vin- 
dicated statue of Liberty? 

And home he had none. No man shared more largely 
in the affections of the American people; no man was 
more beloved by his immediate constituency; but those 
pleasures which the greatest of American orators placed 
above all the other immeasurable blessings of rational 
existence, above the treasures of science and the delights 
of learning and the aspects of nature, even above good 
government and religious liberty, "the transcendent sweets 
of domestic life," were no more for him. Those relations 
which nature intended for the joy and the rapture of our 
3'outh, for the happiness and the embellishment of our 
maturer years, for the comfort and consolation of age, 
had been severed by the remorseless shears of fate. No 
eye grew brighter when he raised the latch that held his 
lonely dwelling; no outstretched arms of wife, no ringing 
laughter of children, welcomed his returning footsteps, 
ivhen he crossed the threshold over which all that had 
given life, and joy, and beauty to that simple abode, and 
had lighted it up with a glory not of palaces, had been 
borne never to return. He had nothing left to love but 
his country. It was proper, then, that he should die here, 
here where his greatest work had been wrought, here 
where his greatest triumphs had been achieved, here where 
his voice had been raised, till the outer corridors had 
echoed back his words, for truth, fir justice, for right. 



LIPE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 71 

It was proper that from yonder Chamber, to which the 
suffrages of his fellow-citizens had earned him, he was 
borne to his final place of rest. He entered that town, 
for the first time, a friendless lad, all his possessions car- 
ried in a bundle which swung lightly in his hand. He 
entered it, for the last time, accompanied by the pageantry 
of a nation's woe, with muffled drums, and arms reversed, 
and banners draped in black; from a thousand heights 
the flag of his country di-ooped at half-mast; from fort 
and arsenal and dock-yard the booming of a single gun, 
at solemn intervals, announced the progress of the sad 
procession. Tender and loving hands received him; 
friends and neighbors, who loved him because he was 
good, even more than they admired him because he was 
great, stood tearfully around his open grave. The bleak 
winds of a New England winter came down from his 
native hills, and moaned his requiem thi-ough the leafless 
trees. And there, with swelling hearts, but with unfal- 
tering trust in the eternal promises of God, they laid his 
manly and stalwart form to mingle with the dust of his 
kindred. 



ADDRESS BY MR. DAWES ON 'J HE 



Address by Mr. Dawes, of Massachuset 



Mr. President, the life and work of the late Vice-Presi- 
dent Avere in all respects so remarkable that they challenge 
the study and admiration of the Ameiican j^eople. The 
biography of distinguished men, the richest of a nation's 
treasures, will yield large space to the one, and the record 
of great and noble achievements, a nation's proudest mon- 
ument, will comprehend the full measure of the other. 
And yet, to the most intimate fiiend and companion, the 
lesson is not easy. That life so fitly closed in the Capitol 
of the nation to whose salvation and glory it was conse- 
crated, and that work so graciously terminated at the goal 
of all his desires, have neither prototype nor parallel. 
Each stands out alone by itself, and is unlike any other 
that has gone before or survived it. .He lived from infancy 
to the end as no other man has lived. He worked, from 
his first entrance into public life till his departure, as no 
man ever worked before him. He was a creation, a spe- 
cialty, a force all by itself, and yet ever in the midst and 
always potent. No one could tell how he had attained 
to this individuality, and yet no one would correctly cal- 
culate the resultant of the ever multiplied and conflicting 



LIFE AND CHARACTEll OF UEiNKY WILSON. 16 

influences bending political opinion who ignored this 
factor. 

Of so obscure and humble an origin that whenever 
friendless poverty sought for a type or representative, 
his name was spoken before any other ; of a public 
life so pure and upright amid temptation and sin that 
his exam{)le was held up for imitation before all others ; 
deprived of opportunities for the acquisition of knowl- 
edge as no other in youth or manhood, he nevertheless 
sought out or created them, and availed himself of a 
breadth of study far more than others to whom opportu- 
nities come unbidden and among whom learning scatters 
her treasures with the most lavish hand. He studied men 
more than books, and his education came from personal 
contact with the practical affairs of life, and not from the 
study of other men's acquisitions in knowledge. His 
whole life bore unmistakable evidence of the school in 
which its lessons were learned. Tested by the standard 
of those the world calls learned he was no scholar, but 
tried by that which the world calls safe, practical, useful, 
he was wise beyond his generation. While he read books 
some and profited much by their perusal, he read men 
more and thereby gathered a larger knowledge of the 
practical duties of life than it was possible for him to have 
acquired in any other way. 

He had not genius, but he had what is more certain of 
.success, industry and fidelity, and their rewards crowned 
liis endeavors. No one can understand or properly esti- 



74 ADDRESS BY MR. DAWES ON THE 

mate his character or career except by a study of the 
elements which formed the one and furnished the instru- 
mentalities which wrought out the other. It was impossi- 
ble that he should be like other men, because the very 
food wliich was his necessity the multitude of men shun 
or escape. And thus it is that only by a proper study of 
the school in which the heart and head of Henry Wilson 
were developed can be found the key to that remarkable 
life and noble Avork whose sublime termination we seek 
by these ceremonies this day to commemorate. 

The world upon which he first opened liis eyes was an 
utterly barren waste, and nowhere, in all his journey 
through it, did any green thing gladden his sight which 
his own hands did not plant and his own fidelity water till 
it bore its legitimate fruit ; nowhere an opportunity for im- 
provement or work, nor an instrumentality for the accom- 
plishment of good, which his own courage and indomitable 
will did not pluck from the very jaws of an adverse fate. 
And thus he was never educated for his life-work, but only 
in and by it, and he grew to fitness for it, and to a mar- 
velous power in it, just as the right arm of the blacksmith 
grows strong through the very blows it strikes. 

When taste led him into politics in 1840 he was without 
education in public affairs, without experience as a speaker 
or any of the natural gifts of an orator. But he had con- 
victions. He believed that, under a Government by and 
for all, it was the duty of all to study and to understand 
their relations to it and their duties and oblig-ations under 



LIFE AND CHARACTEE OF HENRY WILSON. 7!) 

it, and in that sense to be politicians — honest, earnest, 
aggressive politicians. And in teaching others he taught 
himself, till he became one of the most efficient political 
teachers and leaders in his generation. The logic of the 
schools and the arts of the rhetorician he never studied 
and never knew, but of the logic of events and the eternal 
fitness of things he seemed to have intuitive knowledge, 
and 111 the enforcement of their lessons he was remarkably 
effective. He had the courage of his convictions, and he 
followed them, sometimes, though seldom, into the wrong, 
but still he followed them fearlessly, across party lines, 
into strange company, into seeming inconsistencies, and 
into danger if need be. Wherever they led, there he fol- 
lowed. 

Mr. Wilson was a hater of slavery and every sort of 
oppression and infringement on human rights from his 
boyhood. He could not have been otherwise without 
being false to himself and all the experiences of his life. 
War on these wrongs became to him a mission, and he 
took upon himself its work with vows and covenants, 
never faltering so long as there was work to do. He sub- 
ordinated to it all party ties and relations, keeping com- 
pany with political associates and acknowledging fealty to 
political organizations only so long as this higher purpose 
of his life could, in his opinion, be promoted thereby. 
This led him to become a disturbing element, disorganiz- 
ing old parties and organizing new ones. Pie was a revo- 
lutionist in politics, and bore a conspicuous part in every 



76 ADDRESS BY MK. DAWES ON THE 

great political revolt existing organizations have encoun- 
tered in his time. He first came upon the stage as a young 
whig orator in the great political revolution of 1840, and 
participated actively and efficiently in the memorable cam- 
paign which in that year brought the whig party into 
power. With more zeal, as he grew in years and in 
strength, did he lead in 1848 in the organization of the 
free-soil part}- for the destruction of both the whig and 
democratic parties. In 1851 and 1852 he was the master- 
spirit of a coalition between the free-soil and democratic 
parties in his own State in a successful campaign .against 
the whig party of that State, dislodging it from power and 
dividing the offices between the allies, placing Mr. Sumner 
in the Senate and a democrat in the governor's chair. In 
1854, he was one of the leaders in the organization of the 
American party of that day, which overwhelmed in a com- 
mon defeat the whig, democratic, and republican parties, 
carrying down, by his own efforts, his own name at the 
head of the republican ticket for governor of the State. 
By this party he was himself elected to the Senate of the 
United States. In 1855 he again led, in the councils of 
that same American party at Philadelphia, a revolt which 
dismembered and disbanded it on its first attempt to con- 
trol national politics ; and in the following year he was 
found earnest and foremost in tlae work of organizing and 
preparing the present national republican party for its ulti- 
mate triumph in 18G0. With this party in its avowed 
work he continued to act during the remainder of his life. 



LIFE AND CHAEACTER OF HENEY WLLSON. i I 

He had often in those years to answer the charge of vacil- 
lation and inconsistency and a desire for office and power 
regardless of the means used for their attainment. He 
met all these accusations with the bold announcement that, 
with him, neither place nor power nor party was anything 
hut means to an end beyond and above them all, and that 
he would never seek nor serve either except for the attain- 
ment of that end. He outlived many years the adverse 
criticisms and enmities this course engendered ; and, as in 
later years, amid the great events in which he bore so 
prominent a part, his untiring zeal and absolute devotion 
to the political elevation of the down-trodden stood out to 
be read of all men, the general public judgment accorded 
to him a sincerity, sagacity, and statesmanship in these 
frequent changes of political relations which were not uni- 
versally conceded at the time of their occun-ence. 

Mr. Wilson rose rapidly from his first entrance into 
public hfe in 1840. He was a member of the lower house 
of the Massachusetts Legislature by repeated elections, 
four times a senator, and twice the presiding officer of 
that body. He was also a leading and influential mem- 
ber, among the ablest men of the State, of the constitu- 
tional convention of 1853. He was several times candi- 
date of the party with which he acted for governor of the 
State and for Representative in Congi-ess. In 1855, in 
one of those remarkable political revolutions before 
alluded to, he was elected Senator of the United States, 
and took his seat in this body in February of that year. 



78 ADDRESS BY MK. DAWES ON THE 

By repeated and nearly unanimous re-election he held the 
office of Senator eighteen years, and resigned it only to 
assume the duties of the office of Vice-President, to which 
he had been elected in 1872, and which he held till his 
death in the National Capitol on the morning of the 2 2d 
of November last. 

How he acquitted himself in the many positions of pub- 
lic trust and responsibihty to which he was repeatedly 
called by his own State the people of Massachusetts bear 
testimony to-day in the sincere mourning which fills all 
hearts, and in the universal feeling of irreparable loss 
which finds expression in all her borders. How he bore 
himself in this brosider field and under the weightier re- 
sponsibilities and graver duties which the place and the 
times devolved upon him is personally known to many of 
you, Senators, before whom he went in and out daily in 
the patient and self-sacrificing performance of the work 
allotted him, and is now commended by a universal pub- 
lic judgment. He entered this bodj' six years before the 
war ; years of civil strife and commotion ripening into re- 
bellion ; years big with the great events and greater con- 
sequences of that national conflict. On the one side were 
arrayed Jefferson Davis, Toombs, Hunter, Butler, Benja- 
min, and their compeers, if not as yet menacing, certainly 
intense, bitter, and uncompromising. With them, by 
party affiliation, though not in sympathy, and vainly 
struggling against the current of party policy, were Cass 
and Douglas. On the other side, with whom Wilson 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. I'J 

took his place, were, in the early morning of the struggle, 
Clayton, Crittenden, and Bell ; and, all through its heat 
and burden, Wade, Fessenden, Trumbull, Hale, and his 
own great colleague, Sumner. The world has seldom, 
if ever, witnessed a more imposing airay. Among the 
questions debated and determined were the repeal of the 
Missouri compromise, the Dred Scott decision, the forcing 
of slavery into Kansas and a government of slave-holders 
upon her people, the hunting of fugitives from slavery in 
free States, and other kindred measures, involving the 
very existence of the Republic. Never has the world lis- 
tened to a debate on which were staked such momentous 
issues. Among these great men and in these great argu- 
ments Mr. Wilson was neither silent nor weak, but earned 
a national reputation, lie was placed at the head of the 
Military Committee of this body at the beginning of the 
Avar, when its responsibilities and duties assumed an im- 
portance never known before. The records of the Senate 
and the contemporaneous testimony of the high officials 
who leaned on this committee for support in the exigen- 
cies of the war furnish ample evidence of the great abil- 
ity and marvelous industry with which he met the diffi- 
cult and delicate questions and incessant labors of this new 
position. 

The close of the war brought to Mr. Wilson no release 
from active public service. He supported earnestly and 
most efficiently that series of great measures rendered 
necessaiy in the rehabilitation of the rebel States, and 



80 ADDRESS BY ME. DAWES ON THE 

which ultimately wrought those grand changes in the or- 
ganic law of the land that will ever mark this period as 
an epoch in the world's history. Some of the most im- 
portant of these measures originated with him, and in the 
final shape and reach of others may be traced the wise 
and practical counsel, never stumbling over forms nor 
missing the substance, which so characteiized all his work. 
The complete history of the Republic during the eventful 
years of his service here— a history not yet written — will 
alone do justice to the indefatigable endeavors and the 
broad and patriotic statesmanship of Henky Wilson, and 
to its judgment his name and fame may be safely com- 
mitted. 

The personal character of Mr. Wilson was full of noble 
qualities, endearing him to his friends while living and 
making his memory a constant delight. Kindness of heart 
seemed to mellow his whole nature. There was in him 
neither selfishness, nor envy, nor hate, and only generos- 
ity, charity, and good-will. He would empty his pockets 
and borrow of his neighbor to relieve suffering humanity 
stretching out its hands at the corners of the sti-eets. He 
Avould toil and travel, day and night, without i-ecompense 
or hope of reward, if thereby he could contribute to lift tlie 
humble and the lowly to manhood and its opportunities. 
With physical strength and mental vigor was spent for 
others his substance also, and when he died he left in all 
less than the value of one year's salary. Underneath all 
these gentle qualities there lived a personal courage which 



LIFE AND CUAKACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 81 

never quailed in the face of danger. When, under a dis- 
pensation now, thank God, forever passed away, his dis- 
tinguished colleague, for words spoken in debate, fell upon 
the floor of the Senate Chamber beneath the bludgeon of 
one mad with the fury of the times, Mr. Wilson, though 
one of the youngest Senators in service, and yet hardly 
known to those among whom he stood, denounced in his 
place the assault as " brutal, murderous, and cowardly." 
And then, in answer to a challenge from the assailant him- 
self, he had the greater courage to defy both him and the 
barbarous code behind which such men skulk, in words 
which will live as long as the history of those dark times 
and darker deeds shall be read of men. From that horn- 
till the day broke upon a regenerated Republic he carried 
his life in his hand; but never, to save that life, did he 
deviate a hair's breadth from the line of his duty. 

The gratitude of the commonwealth whose commission 
in the public service he bore so long and with such signal 
fidelity and ability, and her grief at his loss, would bid me 
speak many things I must leave unsaid. A personal ad- 
miration of his life and work, joined with an uninteiTupted 
and confiding friendship of many years, has already ex- 
tended the language of eulogy beyond the proper limits 
of this occasion. The rest must be left to the history of 
the times in which he lived, and of the Republic to whose 
true glory his life was consecrated. 

Mr. President, it is appointed unto all men once to die, 
and an untimely death overtakes no one, however inscruta- 



82 ADDRESS BY MR. DAWES. 

ble to mortal vision is the dispensation. But we seem to 
see clearly, even now, that this great change came to Mr. 
Wilson in the fullness of time. In the fierce battle of 
life he had won the victory. The work to which he had 
set apart that life was done; for his countrymen were all 
free, were all equal before the law, and were at peace with 
the world and with one another. He died full of years, 
of honors, and in the blessed hope of a glorious immor- 
tality. His mission here had indeed ended. 

We cannot turn, however, from the contemplation of a 
life so humble and lowly in its beginning, so full of pa- 
triotic • endeavor and noble achievements through all its 
progress, and so illustrious in its end, without reverently 
exclaiming. Surely the ways of man are fashioned of God ! 

And now, Mr. President, as a further mark of respect 
to the distinguished dead, so recently our Presiding Officer, 
I move that the Senate adjourn. 

The motion was agreed to; and (at two o'clock and fifty- 
one minutes p. m.) the Senate adjourned. 



PROCEEDINGS 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 



MESSAGE FROM THE SENATE. 

A message from the Senate, by Mr. Sympson, one of 
tlieir clerks, communicated to the House the resolutions 
of the Senate on the announcement of the death of Henry 
Wilson, late Vice-President of the United States. 

The Speaker. The Chair will direct that the message 
received from the Senate in regai'd to the death of the 
late Vice-President be now read. 

Mr. Holman. I ask unanimous consent that during 
the consideration of the I'esolutions from the Senate, now 
about to be brought to the attention of the House, the 
privileges of the floor be extended to the delegation of 
editors from Indiana who are now visiting this Capitol. 
I believe this is in conformity with precedent. 

There being no objection, it was ordered accordingly. 

The Clerk read as follows: 

In the Senate of the United States, 

January 21, 1876. 
Resolved, That the Senate has received with profound sorrow 
tbo anilouncement of the death of Henry Wilson, late Vice- 



MESSAGE FROM THE SENATE. 



President of tbe United States and President of tlie Senate, wbo 
had been for eighteen .years of consecutive service a member of 
tbis body. 

Resolved, That business be now suspended tbat the friends and 
associates of tbe deceased may pay fitting tribute to his public 
and private virtues. 

Resolved, Tbat the Secretary communicate these resolutions to 
the House of Eepreseutatives. 

Mr. Waeken. Mr. Speaker, I move tbe adoption of the 
resolutions whicli I send to tbe Clerk's desk. 
The Clerk read as follows: 

Resolved, That the House of Eepresentatives has received with 
profound sorrow the announcement of the death of Henry Wil- 
son, late Vice-President of tbe United States. 

Resolved, That business be now suspended to allow fitting 
tributes to be paid to his public and private virtues; and that, as 
a further mark of respect to the memory of the deceased, the 
House at the close of such remarks shall adjourn. 



Address by Mr. Warren, of Massachusetts. 



Mr. Speaker, again, and seemingly all too soon, Mas- 
sachusetts calls upon the Houses of Congress to pause in 
their customary labors and join her in paying ti-ibute to 
the memoiy of one of her departed statesmen. This time 
she has to mourn the loss of him who had been honored 
by the highest office in the Federal Government attained 
by any of her citizens during the last half century, Henry 
Wilson, the eighteenth Vice-President of the United 
States. 

Born at Farmington, in the State of New Hampshire, 
on the 16th day of Febi-uary, 1812, his early life was 
passed in unceasing toil. Yet from childhood he had 
such a thirst for knowledge that when at his maturity he 
left his bu-th-place, he had not only read but had stored 
in his memory, where it remained ever after available for 
instant use, whatever the best authorities upon English 
and American history up to that time had written. 

In 1833 Mr. Wilson removed to Natick, in Massachu- 
setts, and made that place his home. There he was mar- 
ried, and there his remains now repose with those of his 
wife and son. His business life, perhaps the least im- 
portant part of his history, was confined entirely to the 



80 ADDRESS BY MR. WARREN ON THE 

manufacture of boots and shoes, a branch of industry then 
in its infancy in the part of Massachusetts in which he 
resided. But in business he always exhibited the same 
patience of labor and faithfulness in performance which 
characterized all his undertakings. He was by no means 
the least efficient among those whose ingenuity and exer- 
tions brought that manufacture up to its present vast pro- 
p(n-tions. 

It is, however, in his public life that we are more 
peculiarly interested. He took an active part in the can- 
vass of 1840, which resulted in the election of General 
Harrison to the Presidency, and was himself elected in 
that year to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. 
From that time forward his name has never been discon- 
nected from the history of Massachusetts polities, except 
so far as it is more intimately associated with the politics 
of the whole country. Once defeated, he was in 1844 a 
member of the State Senate, and Avas re-elected in 1845. 
In this latter year he presided over a convention assem- 
l)led to oppose the admission of Texas into the Union. 
In 1846 he returned to the House of Representatives, hav- 
ing declined a renomination to the Senate. In 1848 he 
was a member of the national convention which nominated 
General Taylor. This nomination was eifected against 
the strenuous opposition of Mr. Wilson, who felt that 
Mr. Webster should have received the honor. He conse- 
quently was zealous in opposing the election of General 
Taylor, and took part in the calling and organizing of 



LIPE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. h/ 

the Buffalo convention which nominated Martin Van 
Buren for President and Charles Francis Adams for Vice- 
President. He was chairman of the free-soil State com- 
mittee in 1849. In 1850 he again sat in the State House 
of Representatives, and was the candidate of his party for 
Speaker. In the fall of that year he was one of the origi- 
nators and chief supporters of the coalition between the 
free-soil and democratic parties, which elected Mr. Bout- 
well governor, Mr. Wilson himself to the State Senate, 
and made him president of that body, and, after a severe 
contest, sent Charles Siunner to the Senate of the United 
States. In 1852 he was a delegate to the national con- 
vention of the free-soil party held at Pittsburgh, Pennsyl- 
vania; was chairman of the national free-soil committee; 
failed of an election to Congress by less than a hundred 
votes, and was again president of the i\[assachusetts sen- 
ate. His address of welcome to Louis Kossuth, made the 
same year as chairman of a legislative committee, won 
the applause of all parties. In 1853 he was a member of 
and took a prominent part in a convention called to revise 
the constitution of the commonwealth. Here he made 
his influence felt, although the convention contained the 
ablest men in the State of every party. In the same 
year he was the candidate of his party for governor, and 
again in 1854, but was never elected to that office. In 
the latter year he was actively engaged in organizing the 
opposition to the repeal of the Missouri compromise. In 
that year, also, he joined the native American or know- 



88 ADDRESS BY MR. WARREN ON THE 

nothing party, as it was called, which elected its candi- 
date for governor and a large majority in both branches 
of the Legislature. That Legislature met in January, 
1 855, and, on the resignation of Mr. Everett, elected Mr. 
Wilson to the United States Senate. lie took his seat in 
that body on the 10th day of February, 1855, and con- 
tinued to occupy it until he assumed the office of Vice- 
President, March 4, 1873. 

Time would fail me were I to attempt to recount his 
labors as a member of the Senate. Suffice it to say that 
when the history of its memorable doings, for the last 
twenty memorable years, shall come to be written, there 
will be no chapter of the whole record that will not per- 
force mention the name and speak of the labors of Henry 
Wilson, of Massachusetts. And the history of the party 
to which he belonged, and at whose birth he assisted, will 
make mention of no man who did more to lead that party 
from its early adversity and defeat to its final triumph 
and long tenure of power; uo man who labored harder, 
tlu-ough good and through evil report, with brain and 
tongue and hand in the cause to which he was devoted; 
no man who was keener in foreseeing and surer in taking 
the precise step in which the people were ready to follow; 
no man who understood better how to lead forward his 
party from position to position until, through their sup- 
port, every measure of policy which he deemed essential 
was finally established, than Henry Wilson, of Massa- 
chusetts. And so it happened that before and diuing 



LIPE AND CHAEACTEB OF UENKY WILSON. 89 

and since our civil conflict he was all the time one of the 
feremost leaders, one of the most trusted advisers, among 
the men who in those periods in the main shaped the 
destiny of our people. 

With this brief sketch of the wonderfully successful 
career of Mr. Wilson I might pause. But were I to do 
so I might leave the impression that his life was hardly 
an exceptional one in this new and growing country. 
There are, it is true, innumerable instances in each suc- 
ceeding generation of men who, from poverty and depriva- 
tion, have worked their way upward to high position, and 
meanwhile have educated themselves sufficiently to be 
enabled to bear ofi" their honors bravely and do credit to 
themselves and the State. But Mr. Wilson had to con- 
tend against no ordinary odds. His was not the lot of 
him who in a new country, by simple force of character, 
energy, and industry, becomes a leader among the hardy 
pioneers who surromid him. He went a self-taught youth 
from his rustic home into the most populous portion of 
one of the oldest vStates in the Union. He took up his 
abode in the immediate vicinity of our most ancient seat 
of learning. He chose as his political associates a party 
comprising probably two-thirds of the people of Massa- 
chusetts and an equal proportion of those who might truly 
be called the educated and cultivated men in a community 
behind none on this continent in intelligence and refine- 
ment. It was Avith the picked men in such a community 
and in siu-li a party that he was brought into comparison 



yU ADDRESS BY ME. WAEEEN ON THE 

and finally into competition. And it seems to me the 
great success of his life that he took a front rank among 
such comjjetitors and finally superseded the foremost of 
them in the leadership of his party. 

lie must, then, have been possessed of some unusual 
abilities besides mere intellectual power, general knowl- 
edge, the gift of eloquence, or personal character. These 
were possessed in sufficient degree by hundi-eds of his 
compeers. True, he was not lacking in energy ; he shnmk 
from no labor; his mind worked easily and he rarely 
failed to detect the vulnerable point in his adversary's 
position; he had no dearth of general information, and 
even in his early days his style of oratory was far above 
the average. But over and above all this he had in a 
pre-eminent degree two especial qualifications for political 
leadership. These were, first, an intimate acquaintance 
with all the facts of our past and current political history. 
A memory naturally tenacious had been trained and 
crammed to hold this knowledge of political facts alwa3's 
at command. This kind of knowledge has not of late 
been common in Massachusetts. One efifect of the com-se 
of education in that State during the last third of a cen- 
tury, combined doubtless with other causes, has been to 
produce a distaste for political life among men of the 
highest education, and an aversion to any great familiar- 
ity with the details of American political history. 

In the second place, Mi-. Wilson had no superior as a 
party organizer. There may be some who will deem the 



LIFE AND CHAEACTEE OF HENEY WILSON. 91 

possession of the faculty for organizing men into a com- 
pact and formidable body as not a subject for eulogy. 
Such is not my opinion. English and American history 
for centuries has been the history of parties. No other 
instrumentality has been, none is likely to be devised 
which will supplant them as the ready and necessary 
means for molding the policy of the state. In a country 
where new questions are constantly arising and former 
ones becoming obsolete, the organizer is scarcely, if at all, 
less important than the thinker. The student will spend 
his life in the seclusion of his closet; the orator, be he 
ever so impassioned and eloquent, will arouse only dis- 
cord and ill-temper, until he appears who can transform 
their speculations and declamation into a body of meas- 
ures to the support of which he can bring a potent array 
of his fellow-men. It was only through the organizing 
skill of Henry Wilson that it became possible for Charles 
Sumner to pass from a private station to the Senate of the 
United States. If those who claim to be leaders of 
thought and to possess superiority in culture and knowl- 
edge in our community desire or e.xpect hereafter to re- 
sume that guidance and control oyer our aflf;iirs Avhich 
they have of late been wont to complain are not conceded 
to them, they must, first, in knowledge of and fomiliarity 
with national and local politics, and secondly, in learning 
how to organize and direct masses of men, take a lesson 
from the life of Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts. 

With all these qualifications, however, continued sue- 



yli ADDRESS BY MR. WARREN ON THE 

cess would rarely fall to the lot of any man who had not 
some great pui-pose to accomplish. Knowledge of affairs 
and skill in party organization would be acquirements 
dangerous to the public weal unless accompanied by a 
high sense of honor and unselfish devotion to a noble 
cause. In the case of Mr. Wilson no one needs to be 
told that the sentiment that controlled him was the anti- 
slavery sentiment, which he shared in common with al- 
most all the people of his State and section. But while 
with most it was for a long time only a sentiment, with 
him it became the pivot on which his political conduct 
turned. And without even an allusion to the measures 
and events which have for many years been uppermost 
in the minds of us all, without speculating upon what 
might have been done or what avoided, it is not too much 
to say that at this time and in this place, where the people 
of every State in the Union are once again fully repre- 
sented, there is no man who will hesitate to do full justice 
to the purity of motive, the sincerity of conviction, and 
the elevation of sentiment of the earlier New England 
anti-slavery men. 

But it is the crowning glory of Vice-President Wilson's 
life that while he never wavered in his hostility to an in- 
stitution which in his view was a violation of human rights 
and a standing insult to the dignity of labor, he never 
permitted himself to cherish any bitterness of feeling to- 
ward his political antagonists, even after the angry con- 
flict of arms had for a time almost obliterated all kindly 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. \I6 

feelings between the divided sections. Many and many 
are the men in all parts of the South who in their hour of 
distress have found in him a friend and benefactor, and 
here almost within reach of my hand are those who bear 
cheerful testimony to his efforts in their behalf whereby 
their prison doors were opened and they themselves re- 
turned to their homes and friends. 

And so in a more pubhc manner in the last year of his 
life, when he felt that his efforts in behalf of human free- 
dom and the elevation of labor (for he always united the 
two in his thoughts) had reached their full fruition, he set 
himself at work to ascertain what might be done to allevi- 
ate tlie distresses of the Southern people. Forgetting the 
politician and the partisan, he remembered only that he 
was a man and a Christian. And thus it happened that 
when he came to die he left behind no personal or politi- 
cal enemy, but was at peace with all mankind. A re- 
united nation in mourning sympathy followed his mortal 
part to its final resting-place, and to-day expresses a com- 
mon grief in a common loss. He died on the 23d of No- 
vember, within the walls of the Capitol — a most fitting 
place. Bereft of wife and child, he could claim kindred 
but with the Repubhc, and, as it were, in her embrace he 
sank to sleep. Upon him, self-taught, self-trained, but 
who had attained nearly all the honors his native land 
could bestow, speaking, however unworthily, for the dis- 
trict in which he lived, and for the university which is its 
pride and boast, I can freely bestow that meed of praise 



\)i ADDRESS BY MR. WARREN ON THE 

which the ,grecatest of Roman orators was constrained to 
render to the foremost of Roman soldiers, ^^Fuit in illo in- 
genium, ratio, memoria, Uteratura, cogitatio, diligentiay 

And speaking for no single district, nor yet for any 
single countiy, but in the nameof our common humanity, 
I can, with the common consent, place a still higher trib- 
ute, which Roman orator and Roman soldier knew not of, 
the crown of that Christian charity which " suffereth long 
and is kind, envieth not, vaunteth not itself, is not puffed 
up, doth not behave itself unseemly," which "thinketh no 
evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth," 
charity which " never faileth," upon the tomb of Henry 
Wilson, of Massachusetts. 



LIFE AND CnAKACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 



Address by Mr. flarris, of Massachusetts. 



I rise to second the resolutions in honor of Henry 
Wilson, late Vice-President of the United States, which 
have just been presented to this House by my friend and 
colleague from Massachusetts, and in a few words to urge 
their adoption. 

Standing here, Mr. Speaker, in the presence of so many 
distinguished gentlemen who had the privilege of familiar 
social, private, and public intercourse with Mr. Wilson, 
who learned his ambition, his aspiration, and his holies, 
who saw him in liis daily walks and heard his conversa- 
tion, I know how feeble will be the tribute which I must 
pay to him. Nevertheless, I bring my humble offering to 
his grave. 

He was, as has been already said, a man of the people. 
He rose from the humble walks of life by great energy, 
by gi-eat intelligence, to the highest position in the comi- 
try save one. He died in the possession and enjoyment 
of the second honor of the Republic. 

Mr. Wilson understood the people. The people under- 
stood him. He seemed to understand the voice of the 
people and their judgment before it was uttered. He 



90 ADDRESS BY MR. HARRIS ON THE 

stood for many years as if with bis hand upon the popu- 
lar pulse. He felt every heart-beat of the people and 
announced their coming judgment. 

Mr. Wilson was a man of whom I think it may be said 
that he was unsurpassed in private vii-tue. As a citizen 
for the purity of his private life, as a politician for the 
pui-ity of his purposes, he had no superior. However 
men may diifer from him in the views which he enter- 
tained, however bitter at times may have been the con- 
tests in which he engaged, I think to-day there are no 
persons within the sound of my voice who will say they 
do not believe that he was sincere and honest in every 
public and private act. 

No man can sjjeak of Henry Wilson without making 
reference to the relations which he occupied to party and 
to the Republic. To speak of him otherwise than as an 
advocate of liberty and as an adversary and opponent of 
human slavery would be to do injustice to his memor3^ 
He commenced early in his political career as an advocate 
of the slave. At first he only sought to prevent the exten- 
sion of human slavery. At last, when war bui-st upon the 
country, he became the detennined advocate of the abo- 
lition of that institution. I would not refer to any act of 
his which might call back one bitter thought to any gen- 
tleman upon this floor, but he believed that the Constitu- 
tion of his country was a free Constitution, and, with 
Washington and Jefferson, that the institution of slavery 
was contrary to the genius of the Republic. And for 



LIFE AND CHAEACTER OF HENEY WILSON. t)7 

many years he battled faitlifully, as lie believed, in the 
cause of the human race. 

He saw, Mr. Speaker, nothing in the Constitution which 
needed amendment, and could his voice have been heard 
— could those gentlemen in the South who to-day are 
willing to pay tiibute to the memory of Henry Wilson — 
could they have heard his voice when he urged gradual 
emancipation; could they have believed him then; could 
they have found in him then, as they do now, the faithful 
and honest man — the change which had been decreed by 
the Almighty power would have come without shock or 
disaster, but mth benefaction alike to master and slave. 

Mr. Wilson, as a pohtician, pressed his views upon the 
public with persistency and zeal, but I do not think he 
could properly be called a belligerent man. He did not 
so much undertake to convince and convert his enemies 
as to concenti-ate and combine his friends and sympa- 
thizers into one grand power, with which to execute his 
pm-poses. He, therefore, had few personal controversies 
in his life, few personal encounters. I think I may say 
he had as few personal enemies as any public man of his 
time. Indeed, I doubt whether he can be said to have 
had any personal enemies. 

When war burst upon the country, Mr. Wilson left 
nothing undone or unattempted which he believed would 
lead up to the tiiumph of the Government and the 
armies of the country. He was not a trifler in war or 
peace, and when war did come, it was with him war to 



ADDRESS BY MB. HARRIS ON THE 



the knife. But when the war was over, he was knid, for- 
giving, and aflfectionate. To the poor victims of war liis 
heart ovei-flowed with pity; with the tenderness of a 
woman he wept as he staunched the wounds and assuaged 
tlie woes of war. 

After the close of that sad period he proved to the people 
of the North and South that he had no hostility to the 
men whom he believed the institution of slavery had 
cursed. For them he had nothing but kindness and affec- 
tion. He welcomed them back, asking only, when they 
returned to live with him under a redeemed and purified 
Constitution, that they would come with a sincere deter- 
mination honestly and zealously to work with him for the 
glory of the countr}^. 

Mr. Wilson died in the Capitol of his country; a most 
fitting place. He died after probably having accomplished 
all that was left to him to accomplish. He died; and I 
think he receives to-day the fittest eulogy from the people 
of the country, the people of his own class, the humble — 
for Mr. Wilson never forgot that he was from the poor, 
that his origin was among the poor and the humble — and 
the proudest eulogy which goes up is that incense which 
rises from the hearts of the humble and the poor. 

Now, Mr. Speaker, lest I shall trespass too long upon 
the House, I hasten to conclude. I have spoken of Henry 
Wilson only as a national man. Massachusetts to-day 
mourns Henry Wilson, and Massachusetts, Mr. Speaker, 
has cause for sorrow. John A. Andrew, Charles Sumner, 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY "WILSON. 99 

and now Hexry Wilson; Henry Wilson the last of the 
grand trio. Henry Wilson had the confidence of the 
people of Massachusetts. He had their love, and they 
bore him upon their arms into the office of the Vice- 
President of the United States. He was their represent- 
ative, and spoke their voice; and as they gather his 
remains to their final resting-place they treasure his mem- 
ory, and they will transmit his fair example to their sons, 
and point to it as worthy of imitation and emulation for 
the humble and the poor, and for their inspiration. 

Mr. Speaker, John A. Andrew, at the opening of the 
war, during the struggle, and at its close, was the governor 
of that State. Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson spoke 
her voice in tlie Senate of the United States. And I think, 
sir, it is no aiTogance to say that the uttei'ance of those 
three of her noble sons, now all departed, the utterance of 
those three was the true utterance of the commonwealth 
of Massachusetts, of the nation, and of the age in which 
they lived. Charles Sumner passed away at the most 
iitting and proper period, perhaps, for his death. He had 
arrived at the highest honors. He had accomplished all 
there was for him to do and he passed away; but Mr. 
Speaker, not until he lifted his voice to welcome back to 
the protection of the Constitution and into the fold of the 
Republic every man who had left it during the war of the 
rebellion. John A. Andrew before his death announced 
with his ringing voice his desire that eveiy person in the 
Ro])ul)lic should come back again and enjoy the privileges 



ADDRESS BY MR. HARRIS ON THE 



and the franchises of the Republic; and Henry Wilson 
before his death had shown to all the people that his voice 
was for reconcihation, for peace, for amnesty. 

Mr. Speaker, now as Massachusetts gathers to her bosom 
the remains of her chosen son, what is the message, what 
is the voice that she utters in the ears of the nation ! It 
is not the voice of hate, it is not the voice of hostility, it is 
not that: it is the voice of love, fraternal feeling, and con- 
cord. May she not say, "These were the men who spoke 
my voice; you have heard it, and after all was it not a 
voice in favor of 'peace on earth and good- will to men?'" 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 



Address by Mr. Kelley, of Pennsylvania. 



Mr. Speaker, with whatever waimth of maternal affec- 
tion Abigail Colbath welcomed the boy who was born 
to her in Farmington, N. H., on the 16th of February, 
1812, there was naturally a feeling throughout tlie 
family that he was not a welcome guest. The event 
doubtless evoked the sympathy of friends and neighbors, 
for they knew that the chilling shadow of poverty dark- 
ened the household; that want was to sit by the cradle of 
the little one, and that it was probable he would at times 
ask for bread when the mother would have none to give. 
Could, however, Abigail and Winthrop Colbath have pen- 
etrated the secrets of the future, they would have been 
exalted with joy and a novel consciousness of pride. 
They would have seen that, though poverty was to attend 
his infancy and poorly-requited labor be his lot in youth 
and early manhood, their child was destined to be a posi- 
tive and beneficent force during one of the great epochs 
in his country's history, and that, after a life closed in the 
"sere and yellow leaf," his remains would be borne from 
the Capitol of his country by a grateful and sorrowing 
people to the State he had so long served and which in 



102 ADDRESS BY MB. KELLEY ON TUE 

recognition of liis services bad honored him as it had few 
of its citizens. 

I have heard men say that Henry Wilson was not a 
great man. This may be true ; but, if it be, it proves that 
a good spii-it is a more potent social agent than great 
parts. Henry Wilson, by his tidehty to conviction, by 
his freedom from selfish ambitions, by liis powers as an 
organizer, his capacity to combine for common objects 
those who, differing widely on incidental points, agreed 
only on the leading pm-pose of the day, and by his almost 
ceaseless and seemingly unwearying labor, exercised dur- 
ing the last quarter of a century an influence as powerful 
and wide-spread as any among the most gifted of his fel- 
low-citizens. 

I remember his advent to the politics of Massachusetts 
as the Natick cobbler, in 1840, shortly before which date 
I had ceased to be a working jeweler in Boston, whither 
I had gone in the winter of 1834-35, in pursuit of em- 
ployment, which the severity of a financial crisis denied 
me in my native city. The earnestness of the man, the 
simplicity and directness of his character, his knowledge 
of facts, liis clearness of statement, and the language in 
which he clothed thought and fact gave promise of a po- 
tential futm-e, and his position in the politics of Massachu- 
setts was at once assured. Mr. Wilson and I were then 
members of opposing parties; he was a Avhig, I a demo- 
crat. Having returned to my home and engaged in other 
pursuits than those for which the labors of my youth had 



LIFE AND CHAKACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 103 

fitted me, I had not obsei-ved his progress in connection 
with public affaii-s, and he next came specially under my 
notice in 1852, when he had been a delegate to the national 
convention of the free-soil party, held at Pittsburgh in 
1852, and been called to preside over that body, and also 
made chairman of the national committee of that party. 
From Pittsburgh he came to Philadelphia. I met him 
soon after his arrival, and the interest we each felt in pre- 
venting the extension to the Temtories of a system of un- 
paid labor and to the creation of more slave States had 
removed the political differences that had divided us twelve 
years before. From that time we were to be co-workers 
and friends, and our meetings were frequent, for thence- 
forward it seemed impossible to conduct a campaign in 
Pennsylvania without the aid of Henry Wilson's prudent 
counsels and popular appeals. As a public speaker he 
was welcomed to every part of our State, and I do not 
exaggerate when I say that he addressed more people in 
Pennsylvania than any other man who never resided 
within her limits. In parts of the State he was loved as 
he was by the reformatory and progressive people of ]\Ias- 
sachusetts. His name never failed to attract a large au- 
dience or his addresses to inspire with courage and the 
purpose of determined and effective labor those who heard 
him. 

We shall hear his voice no more on our mountain sides 
and in our beautiful valleys, but he has not ceased to be 
an influence for good among us. The good men do lives 



104 ADDRESS BY ME. KELLEY ON THE 

after them. The story of Henky Wilson's youth, if fitly 
written, will be clothed in pure monosyllabic Saxon, that 
untaught children may understand its full import. Nor 
do the incidents of his matui'er life need rhetorical setting. 
They speak for themselves with such force and directness 
that his biographer who shall attempt by literary effort to 
add to their force will mar the influence of his example. 
To produce its just effect the statement of tlie means by 
which he rose, step by step, from the shoemaker's seat to 
the Legislature of Massachusetts, to the position of next 
to the senior member of the Senate of the United States, 
and subsequently to the Vice-Presidency, should be made 
in his own simple and direct style. His example of frugality 
and abstinence from theuseof all hurtful stimulants, hishabit 
of personal economy, his indifference to worldly wealth, his 
sympathetic generosity to the poor and afflicted, his unceas- 
ing labors, and the honors that attended them, are inspiring 
examples to every gifted child of poverty. Invaluable as 
the story of Henry Wilson's life is to us of the North, 
now that the temble apprehension of servile revolt and of 
arbitrarily enforced social equality between the races, 
Avhich filled many minds after war had emancipated the 
slaves, that hung like threatening clouds over Southern 
society, has vanished, it is far more valuable to the 
South, among whose people are so many who will be 
benefited by learning how a poor and almost fi-iendless 
boy can find pleasure in books, and by their friendly as- 
sistance mount from helpless obscurity to personal power 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OP HENRY WILSON. 10^) 

and possible distinction. But not to tlie hnmble alone 
does the life of Henry Wilson speak, for, properly con- 
sidered, its great lesson is to tliose whose lot in life is 
happier, whose privilege it is to legislate for and govern 
others. In his career they will find proof that energies, 
which neglected or ti-ained in vicious ways would be 
dangerous to society, if turned toward self-culture and 
directed to noble purposes, will add not only to the power 
but to the glory of the state. 



ADDUKSS BV MU. KNOTT ON THE 



Address by Mr. Knott, of Kentucky. 



Mr. Speaker, it is no part of my purpose to pronounce 
a studied panegyric upon either the genius or the public 
services of the distinguished man to the memory of whose 
virtues we would pay a becoming tribute of respect, and 
tlie recollection of whose frailties, if any he had, we would 
bury with his nioldering dust forever beyond our view. 
I seek, sir, to add but a single leaf to the garland we 
would hang upon his tomb. I rise simply to express the 
unfeigned and heartfelt admiration of my people as well 
as my own high appreciation of that genuine manliness 
and true nobility of soul exhibited by the illustrious de- 
ceased in one of the most unostentatious yet to my mind 
one of the most singularly beautiful and touching acts of 
his whole life. 

But a short time previous to his death Mr. Wilson had 
occasion to visit the metropolis of my native State, where 
he was welcomed with that cordial, open-handed, warm- 
hearted hospitality which I am proud to say has always 
characterized its generous people. All classes, ii-respective 
of political prejudices and party affiliations, vied with each 
other in extending to him the evidences of that liig-h con- 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. ]07 

sideration due to one of the most distinguished citizens 
of the country, and especially to the high position he oc- 
cupied as Vice-President of the United States. No atten- 
tion which could possibly render his stay agreeable was 
omitted by those into whose midst he had come. And no 
one was better able to appreciate their courtesy than their 
illustrious visitor. But while he was in the full enjoyment 
of those amenities which were so genial to his own warm 
and generous nature, cheered on every hand by friendly 
greetings, welcomed, honored, and entertained in circles 
of the highest refinement and culture, wliere all was joy 
and happiness and peace, a far different scene was pre- 
sented in an unpretending Kentucky home a little over a 
hundi-ed miles away. There, around the hearth-stone of 
one whom he had known in former years as an able and 
detemiined political opponent, one from whom he had 
been long separated by the fierce conflict of party strife 
and the still fiercer clash of war, were gathered the wan 
specter of anxiety and anguish and sorrow; for there the 
proud form which had challenged the admiration of tliou- 
sands in the forum, upon the rostrum, in the Senate, and 
amid the crash of battle, stricken and prostrate h\ disease, 
was wasting rapidly awa}'. There one of tlie grandest 
spirits that ever illustrated the dignity and majesty of our 
race was pluming its pinions for its final flight to brighter 
climes. Breckini-idge the proscribed — the exile in his own 
native land— the alien in the midst of his own people, who 
loved him as a brother, lay dying. When the sad intelli- 



108 ADDRESS BY MR. KNOTT ON THE 

geace was communicated to the great man whose memory 
we mourn to-day, he threw aside all the fascinations of 
the most refined and elegant hospitality, and with his great 
heart full of friendship and fraternal feeling hastened to 
the bedside of the dying statesman, who in the calm dig- 
nity of his own majestic soul had borne for years the ban 
of jiroscription, there to tender his sympathy and testify 
his warm personal regard for one whom he had formerly 
recognized as the exponent and champion of principles 
which he himself had made it the great mission of his life 
to oppose in every legitimate manner and with all the 
earnestness and fervor of his own zealous and determined 
nature. Ah, Mr. Speaker, what a scene was that! The 
Vice-President of a proud and poweiful people, with every 
feature of his benevolent face beaming with the kindest 
sentiments of friendship and brotherly love, as he held the 
emaciated hand of the dying hero in liis own warm and 
cordial grasp ! What an example to the emulation of the 
genuine American everywhere; what a total absence of 
every trace of that bitter, unforgiving, relentless, remorse- 
less hate that clings alone to the ignoble soul ! What a 
sublime spectacle of that exalted magnanimity which 
always belongs to a noble nature ! 

Mr. Speaker, that simple act of manly courtesy secured 
for our dead Vice-President a wai-m place in the heart of 
every true Kentuckian. From that hour there was a total 
oblivion of everything like prejudice that they may have 
entertained against him. From that hour there was not a 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 109 

household in my native State in which Henry Wilson 
would not have been hailed as a welcome and an honored 
guest. For, sir, that simple, touching, unostentatious inci- 
dent proved him to be a generous, warm-hearted, high- 
souled, noble man, and an honor to the proud old common- 
wealth that gave him birtli. And, sir, when the lightning- 
winged messenger whisi)ered over this land the melancholy 
tidings of his peculiar, mournful death, it nowhere touched 
a more responsive chord, nor will its memory be any- 
where more tenderly enshrined, than in the grateful hearts 
of Kentucky. 



ADDRESS BY ME. CLYMER ON THE 



Address by Mr. Clymer, of Pennsyh 



Mr. Speaker, during my brief service in this body the 
commonweahh of Massachusetts has been chief mourner 
among the States. Her great Senator, Charles Sumner, 
was first summoned to his account, and then in quick 
succession Alvah Crocker, Samuel Hooper, and James 
Ikiffinton, members of this House during the last Congress, 
each honored and distinguished and all beloved by those 
who knew them, entered the dread portal! Now again 
she is sorely stricken. One who had long and faithfully 
served her in her own councils and in those of the nation, 
one whom she had given to the Republic to occupy the 
position next highest in dignity and power, has passed 
away, and her sister commonwealths may not fail to assure 
her of their common sympathy in this hour of her new 
and sad bereavement. 

It is my regret that the voice of Pennsylvania is not 
heard through one who knew him more intimately than 
myself, and if I fail to justly record his personal vu-tues or 
to place a proper estimate on his public services, I pray it 



LITE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. Ill 

may be attributed to the absence of those intimate per- 
sonal relations which alone enable us to thoroughly appre- 
ciate and understand the motives and actions of men. 

Born in obscurity and reared in poverty, he early exhib- 
ited that indomitable and unceasing energy which so 
strongly marked his subsequent career. Amid the drud- 
gery of his life, when bound apprentice to a former and 
when learning the trade of a shoemaker, he was assiduous 
in his efforts to acquire knowledge, and of him it may be 
truly said that he was " a self-made man," for all his early 
scholastic training was acquired by his own unaided exer- 
tions, under the most difficult and often the most disheart- 
ening circumstances. 

His thirst for knowledge was intense, and his mind was 
too vigorous and acute to be blind to the fact that mere 
untutored and uncultured genius is of little avail when 
brought into contact with trained and disciplined intel- 
lect. The friendless condition of his boyhood, the grave 
and pressing necessities of his early manhood, his constant 
struggle with poverty, his unyielding determination to 
rise above the condition in which he was bom, all tended 
to develop in him a sturdy independence of thought and 
action wliich was clearly exhibited at the Very threshold of 
his public life. Sprung from the soil, knowing well its 
hard condition, allied by his antecedents with the sons of 
toil, never failing to recognize their rights, and ever ready 
to defend their wrongs, he did not hesitate in their inter- 
ests to break political alliances, then all-alluring and most 



112 ADDRESS BY MR. CLYMER ON THE 

powerful, to assert the individuality of his convictions 
and the sincerity of his motives. Added to this inde- 
jiendence of thought and action, he had that which is so 
necessary to great achievements, implicit faith in himself 
and in the soundness of his own judgment, giving direct- 
ness, force, and simplicity to his character. 

In him there was, too, a large-hearted charity, a deep 
human sympathy born of his early adversity, which im- 
j)elled him during his whole life to befriend the poor and 
lowly, to lift up and succor the weak, to cheer and 
encourage the struggling, and to defend and protect the 
friendless and opjDressed. And, sir, as I look back upon 
the clouds and darkness from which we have emerged, and 
consider what sacrifices he made, what obloquy he endured, 
what labor he performed in order that this charity, this 
human sympathy, might find expression, I may not fail to 
avow my profound admiration for his sincerity, retaining, 
nevertheless, my own convictions as to the justice and 
propriety of the means by which he sought to accomplish 
results. 

It was this same catholic spirit which caused him, when 
the civil war was ended, to devote all his energies to 
healing its wounds, to drying up its tears, and to rebuilding 
its places made waste and desolate. In him there was no 
bitterness; his heart concealed no vengeance; "Vengeance 
is mine ; I will repay, saith the Lord," was his childlike. 
Christian faith, and in the last public act of his long career 
he placed it on recoi'd for all coming time ; since it was 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 11^ 

at his suggestion and by his desire and advice that the 
State convention of his party in Massachusetts, held at 
Worcester on the 29th day of September, 1875, over 
which he presided, adopted the following resolution : 

Tliat the republicans of Massacbusetts welcome all auguries and 
evidences that the Centennial of American Independence will be 
celebrated by the complete restoration of fraternity, and they ex- 
press the opinion that the time has come for the removal of all 
remaining political disabilities. 

Had he lived to-day we may believe that the spirit of 
this resolution would have received unanimous indorse- 
ment here as it did during the last Congress. That it has 
not is not the fault of him, being dead, nor of the people of 
the great commonwealth who so loved and honored him. 

To others I cheerfully leave the task of recounting 
with particularity his labors in the Senate during his long 
and eventful service. It is enough for me to say that, 
being of robust mental and physical nature, he was capa- 
ble of great labor ; that he was a worker in its true and 
best sense, and that during the war his name is connected 
either as author or advocate with nearly or quite all the 
military legislation of the period. His presence and offi- 
cial service were given to every public duty unselfishly 
and freely. 

As a humanitarian he was abreast of, if not in advance 
of, public sentiment on every moral question, and he never 
shrank from the public advocacy of his views, whatever 
might be the effect on his ])olitical fortunes. 

In contemplating his public life, the impulse is irresist- 



114 ADDRESS BY MR. CLYMER ON THE 

ible to contrast it with that of Charles Sumner, his col- 
league during the eighteen years of his senatorial career. 
To him he was most unlike, and yet he was no less use- 
ful. The one the pati-ician, educated in the groves of the 
academy ; the other the plebeian, who, groping amid toil 
and penury, sought knowledge and found it by his own 
unaided efforts. Sumner was a man of books ; Wilson, 
of men ; Sumner, of ideas ; Wilson, of deeds ; Sumner, 
of theories ; Wilson, of action ; Sumner lived and moved 
in the unreal world of thought ; Wilson moved and acted 
among men. Each had strong convictions. Sumner 
sought and would have his in paths chosen by himself ; 
Wilson would accept results offered him by fortune or 
won in modes he did not prefer. As statesmen, Sumner 
acted in profound indifference, if not contempt, of the act- 
ual forces which existed, looking confidently to the end 
some time to come ; Wilson labored in the light of and 
molded the influences which surrounded him, subordinat- 
ing all minor matters to the object he desired to accom- 
plish. As a result, Sumner theorized much, and left as 
memorials many splendid phrases ; Wilson spoke much 
and identified himself with all the distinguished measures 
of his speech. Widely different in origin, tastes, thought, 
and action, these two men supplemented and comple- 
mented each other in a way so rare and yet so admirable 
that the great commonwealth which ever honored herself 
by honoring them may fail to find in long years to come 
two men who shall so truly reflect all of her that is good 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. llu 

and true, manly and generous, learned and refined. No 
shadow fell upon their friendship in life, and they will go 
into history so linked together by the unity of their serv- 
ice and so bound together by the very dissimilarity of 
their ti'aining and action that the one may never be men- 
tioned without recalling the honored name of the other. 

In seeking for the cause which so strongly bound these 
two men together in spite of the obvious dissimilarity 
which existed, it may be found in that absolute and per- 
fect pei-sonal integrity which so clearly marked the con- 
duct of each. And if the late Vice-President had no other 
claim to the respect and admiration of the age in which 
he lived, it would shed a halo of glory around his name 
in all time to come to have it said of him with truth that, 
having served State and nation for more than a quarter of 
a century, he died poor. The statement of the fact is its 
own commentary. Amid the license of civil war ; with 
public conscience blunted ; when cupidity was excited by 
opportunity ; when unmeasured wealth might have been 
and often was wrung from the very necessities of a stricken 
land without challenge and without reproof, he, leading a 
life of almost Spartan simplicity, stainless and pure, died, 
as he had lived, an honest man. 

There was, su-, something very touching and sad in the 
manner of his death. It did not come to him unheralded. 
Long before the final stroke the warning messenger was 
by his side, and for months it followed him silently as a 
shadow, i-elentlessly as fate ! Ever afterward he went 



lib ADDRESS BY MB. OLYJrER ON THE 

aboiit the land deeply solicitous for the common welfare, 
bearing messages of fraternal love, of peace, of good-will 
to all of every section. Walking daily in the very pres- 
ence of death, envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitable- 
ness found no home in his breast ; and as he ever prayed 
for mercy and forgiveness, so, too, would he have extended 
these rich blessings to every one everywhere. 

Weeks before the meeting of Congress in December, he 
came here in restless anxiety to complete the work which 
is to be the record of his life and times. And here, in his 
chamber of state, in high serenity, sustained by his faith 
and willing to be judged by his motives and works, he 
received the final summons, and, gathering his robes about 
him, he fell asleep under the shadow of the Dome of the 
Capitol. It was a fitting place for him to die. Wifeless, 
childless — the light had gone out from his own house ; all 
was dreary darkness there — and coming to this the home 
of the nation he entered it as of right by virtue of his great 
oflSce, and from its portal passed away forever, to find his 
last home in the bosom of the State he had loved and 
served so well, deplored and respected by the people. 

Full of years and laden with honors, the most extrava- 
gant political dreaius of his youth and manhood more than 
verified; with but one possible ambition unsatisfied— who 
may say he was not fortunate in his death? 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 



Address by Mr. Kasson, of Iowa. 



Mr. Speaker, the representative men of a great histori- 
cal era are passing rapidly from this sphere of their duties. 
One by one, while the country proudly recognizes in them 
the souvenirs of its latest glory, they sink beneath that 
tide which ovei-flows all mortal distinction. Lincoln, Win- 
ter Davis, and Chase, Fessenden, Grimes, and Sumner, 
leaders in the forefront of the late gigantic battle between 
hostile ideas, had already passed from among us before 
reaching the usual limit of human life. Again unwilling 
to wait for the ripeness of age, death has summoned an- 
other of the historic company to join his old associates 
in the land beyond the sun. Heaven seems to have grown 
avaricious, to seize so soon, and in the very vigor of his 
years, another living star from the visible coronet of the 
Eepublic. "We complain that the divine sickle could not 
wait for all this human harvest until the whitened and 
bending heads should incline with the weight of years 
toward the earth which was destined to receive them. 

When Henry Wilson, Vice-President of the United 
States, received his summons, his form was still round and 
erect, his eyes beaming with sympathetic intelligence, his 
hearing open to every sound, his complexion fresh; his 



118 ADDRESS BY MR. KASSON ON THE 

voice retained its earnest tones, his mind its vigor, and his 
heart its patriotism. The ears of his countrymen in all 
parts of the Union were still listening to his counsel, while 
their understandings were informed by his practical wis- 
dom. We justly pronounce his departure from public life 
a national loss. It is the occasion of grief to kindred, to 
neighbors, to friends, to associates, and to patriots. Kin- 
dred and neighbors about his humble home on that eastern 
coast of Massachusetts to which his dust was committed, 
remember and celebrate his kindly private virtues and af- 
fections. There remains to us who have been his comrades 
in stormy times the recollection and celebration of those 
loftier public qualities, which bore him from such lowly 
beginnings to his exalted office, and which won for him 
the large influence which he wielded at the time of his 
death. 

Sir, the two extreme forms of luiman government, des- 
potism and democracy, touch each other at various points 
in spirit and in action. Both are willful, full of force, and 
delight in surprises, alternating in action between selfish- 
ness and generosity. Despotism sometimes surrounds 
itself with the splendors of high birth and the culture of 
learning and the refinements of the arts and civilization ; 
and again, indulges itself with the overthrow of all in- 
herited rights and all claims of distinction, and elevates, 
instead, some imlieralded and imknown servants, some 
Daniel or Joseph, from the humblest ranks to the govern- 
ing places of the state. 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OP HENRY WILSUN. 119 

So the limited, democracy of America lias indulg-ed its 
will at one time in elevating the well-bred dignity and 
worth of Washington and of Adams, the polished culture 
of Jefferson, and the well-trained logic of Madison. Again, 
it has taken the ruder strength of Jackson, and the sol- 
dierly simplicity of Taylor. Later still, with an awakened 
conscience, it chose a great-hearted, undisciplined child of 
the people, and sent Lincoln suddenly to the ruling place. 
Democracy in him manifested a grandeur of character 
which was much sooner comprehended by the earnest 
hearts of the common people, at home and abroad, than 
by the more cultivated intellects of the world, who have 
since hastened to crown his unclassic brow with the laurel 
of histor3\ It was in this era, when our republican de- 
mocracy was listening to its new-found conscience, that it 
nurtured, watched, and developed another of its unheralded 
children, amid the trials of poverty and the struggles for 
even an incomplete education. 

I trust, Mr. Speaker, that it is not too early to claim for 
the late Vice-President the impartial and unimpassioned 
judgment of the citizens of all parts of the restored Union. 
In the decade which has elapsed since the fires of civil 
war were extinguished, the inflamed minds of men have 
also become more cool and dispassionate. Certainly a 
thoroughly restored balance of judgment cannot be re- 
gained suddenly, on the morrow of such a conflict. When 
we remember how many years the passions Avere growing, 
how at last they ripened into blood, how many sacrifices 



120 ADDRESS BY MR. KASSON ON THE 

Avere endured on both sides before the fever departed and 
the wounded nation rose to its feet once more, we find 
cause for congi'atulation that the balance is so far redressed 
as we find it to-day. For thirty years it was a contest of 
oiDposing ideas respecting the proper constitutional organi- 
zation of American society. These ideas were the invisi- 
ble combatants, which finally incarnated themselves for 
fight and waged their warfare till the earth trembled under 
their clashing. In the intellectual struggle Mr. Wilson 
early engaged, and on the side of that small minority which 
seemed at the time to be a mere faction, hopeless of the 
confidence of even a single State. When that faction grew 
into a party, and the party increased to a majority, and the 
majority obtained control of the State, then, in 1855, the 
liberty -loving artisan replaced in the United States Senate 
tliat polished scholar and orator whom Massachusetts found 
unequal to the demand of the coming crisis. In that body, 
and in its high debates, he was to be compared or contrasted, 
by friend and foe, with such distinguished associates as Cass 
and Seward, Chase and Douglas, Sumner and Mason, Crit- 
tenden and Slidell, with whom he was to discuss the most 
vital questions of the Union. 

When Mr. Wilson left the plow for the bench of the 
artisan, and abandoned that bench for the forum of public 
debate, he had small store of learning, but a great sym- 
pathy for all his brethren — the children of labor. The 
field of liis knowledge did not include the courses of the 
planets, the discoveries of science, the rules of art, nor 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. VJl 

the pliilosopliy of antiquity, nor even the history of okler 
nations. But his mind, with remarkable vigor, grasped 
and comprehended the wants of his race on this continent. 
His knowledge of American needs was at first more the 
result of a sympathetic experience than of careful study. 
He never separated himself, nor sought to separate him- 
self, from the ground of his early experiences. That 
ground was hard fact. Throughout his career he dealt 
with facts. The genius of his childhood endowed him 
with no gifts of imagination or of artistic invention, and 
the wings of cultui-e were wanting to his fancy. He 
could neither soar to the zenith, nor descend to the nadir; 
but always moved along the line of the visible horizon. 
There was no fever in his speech. Its most vigoi-ous pul- 
sations manifested only the glow of great earnestness. 
Without soaring, the movement of his eloquence was a 
strong stride, every footfall of which struck the solid 
ground and gave vigor to the next step. His whole politi- 
cal landscape was marked by solid metes and bounds. 
In the realm of American facts he was king, and in this 
realm he was rarely, if ever, worsted in debate. Un- 
trained in the law, he was not much given to theories of 
constitutional construction, but was thoroughly imbued 
with the spirit of that charier of American liberty. 
Wherever there might seem to be a conflict of its provis- 
ions, its grand guarantees of the rights of persons were 
vastly more important, in his judgment, than its guaran- 
tees of the rights of property. He interpreted it always 



V22 ADDRESS BY MB. KASSON ON THE 

as illuminated by the diviner light of the Declaration of 
Independence. 

If ever his rhetoric touched the borders of enthusiasm, 
if ever he seemed to have drank at some spring of oi'ator- 
ical inspiration, it was when he asserted the right of labor 
to freedom, and the right of freemen to labor -without 
degradation. Then, filled with reminiscences of his own 
early struggles, and expanding them to take in the trials 
of millions like himself, and remembering those aspira- 
tions which gilded the dark clouds of his laborious youth, 
he kindled a flame in the hearts of his toiling countrymen 
which was not destined to die. It was the harp of uni- 
versal humanity whose cords he struck ; and such music 
once heard is never forgotten. It sounds and resounds 
from one home and hamlet of the toiling millions to an- 
other, and its echoes will never cease till the divine edict 
for the earning of bread shall be revoked. 

Hear him for a moment in the Senate Chamber, in those 
tempestuous times when labor was clamoring to be released 
from the degrading thralldom of personal slavery. A Sen- 
ator from South Carolina had just called the manual labor- 
ers of the North "hirelings," "essentially slaves," "galled 
by their degradation," and the "mud-sills" of society. 
Henry Wilson, impatient and glowing, takes up the word 
as if all the hills of New England were ready to burst with 
resenting speech. He said : 

This language of scoru and contempt is addressed to Senators, 
who were not nursed by a slave ; whose lot it was to toil with their 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY "WILSON. 123 

own bands; to eat bread earned, not by the sweat of another's brow 
bat by their own. Sir, I am the sou of a hireling manual laborer, 
who, with the frosts of seventy winter's on his brow, lives by daily 
labor. I, too, have been a hireling manual laborer. Poverty cast 
its dark and chilling shadow over the home of my childhood ; and 
want was there, au unbidden guest. At the age of ten years, to 
aid him who gave me being in keeping the gaunt specter from the 
hearth of the mother who bore me, I left the home of my boyhood 
and went to earn my bread by daily labor. Many a weary mile 
have I traveled — 

"To beg a brother of the earth 
To give mo leave to toil." 

Sir, I have toiled as a "hiring laborer" in the field and the 
workshop, and I tell the Senator Irom South Carolina that 1 never 
"felt galled by" my " degradation." No, sir; never. * * * i 
was conscious of my manhood. I was the peer of my employer. 
* * * I knew, too, that the world was before me; that its 
wealth, its garnered treasures of knowledge, its honors, the cov- 
eted prizes of life, were within the grasp of a brave heart and a 
tireless hand; and I accepted the responsibilities of my position, 
all nnconscious that I was a "slave." * * * In every position 
of private and public life are our associates who were but yester- 
day "hireling laborers," "mud-sills," "slaves." In every depart- 
ment of human effort are noble men who sprang from our ranks — 
men whose good deeds will be felt and will live in the grateful 
memories of men when the stones reared by the hands of affection 
to their honored names shall crumble into dust. Our eyes glisten 
and our hearts throb over the bright, glowing, aiul radiant pages 
of our history that record the deeds of patriotism of the sons of New 
England who sprang from our ranks and wore the badges of toil. 
While the names of Benjamin Franklin, Eoger Sherman, Nathanael 
Greene, and Paul Revere live on the brightest pages of our his- 
tory, the mechanics of Massachusetts and New England will never 
want illustrious examples to incite them to noble aspirations and 
noble deeds. 

So spoke this champion of free labor. The same senti- 
ment expressed by the rhymes of Robert Burns has echoed 



124 ADDRESS OF MB. KASSON ON THE 

over two continents, and still warms the hearts of all the 
English-speaking races. Sir, had this splendid assertion 
of indignant manhood come down to us on some venera- 
ble parchment which preserved the sayings of Greek or 
Roman orators, our high-bred youth would echo it in all 
our schools and universities as belonging to the most vig- 
orous days of ancient civilization. It would have ranked 
with the protest of St. Paul when he asserted his rights 
as a Roman citizen, and appealed to Cresarfor their recog- 
nition, as Wilson appealed to the Senate and to the Re- 
public. No prouder, manlier utterance was ever heard on 
the floor of the Senate or from a tribune of the people. It 
presents the inner life, better than any words of my inven- 
tion, of him whose funeral-rites we celebrate. 

Of all the speeches of this eminent man of the people 
known to me, this, from which I borrow an extract, in 
reply to the challenge, imported from the drawing-room 
into the politics of that day, and flung into the face of free 
labor, is the most characteristic, as it was, perhaps, the 
most effective. Its wide circulation in our valley of the 
Mississippi roused strong emotion in the breast and nerved 
the arm of toil. It was in 1858 that the worth of free 
labor was thus vindicated in the preliminary war of the, 
conflicting ideas of our social organization. Two years 
later free white labor vindicated its own dignity by elect- 
ing one of its own children to the first place of national 
honor, and again a few years later, having destroyed the 
adverse system, it elevated another of its family, its cham- 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 125 

pion and the author of this speech, to the second pLace of 
national dignity. 

Mr. Speaker, often in reading the history of nations we 
are siu-prised and awed by some striking evidence of 
Divine intervention in the adjustment of human affairs. 
The weahhy, the wise, the mighty, overtaken by some 
improbable event, disappear from the stage, and their 
places are filled by those who had been the scorned or 
oppressed victims of their power ; and the result was not 
foreseen of Inmaan contrivance. But in no country, except 
in France, have the events of any quarter of a century of 
modern history been more surprising and dramatic than 
in ours. That political philosophy and thorough-bred 
intellect Avhich prevailed here and rendered the chambers 
of this Capitol illustrious thirty years ago have passed from 
this theater with much of the wisdom of that epoch which 
made them illustrious. Political theorists and theories, 
doctrinaires and their doctrines, though crystallized in sol- 
emn resolutions, dedicated to the names of powerful states, 
and drawn by mighty political logicians, have gone down 
before an enemy which never sleeps and always advances. 
The lights of humanity, the ideas of its progress, have 
gradually conquered or swept away all obstructions in the 
way of its organized march, and we have begun a new era 
wliich demands extraordinary foresight and vigilant care. 
It is a halt in the march of our destiny, while the new 
order is established. We are in the double peril of re- 
action and of rash action. 



VM address by MR. KASSON ON THE 

The counsel of the man we mourn to-day would have 
been beyond price during this halting' decade of American 
politics and society. He was one of the few living links 
between the public life of twenty years ago and that of 
the passing day. His mental comprehension of the coun- 
try, both of its interests and of its sentiments ; his unim- 
passioned judgment; his conciliatory regard for all citizens 
of the restored Eepublic; his greater love of peace than 
of violence; his sincere patriotism — all these were quali- 
ties which gave him a rare endowment of utility for our 
times. As I review his career, so early and so constantly 
and so admirably devoted to liberty and to the state, it 
seems that he must have been gifted at birth with the sen- 
timent which Pericles uttered in his oration at the celebra- 
tion of the funeral rites in Athens. Said the Greek orator 
to the Athenians, "You must constantly keep before your 
eyes the powers of the state, and must love them. Look 
for happiness in liberty, and for liberty in your own cour- 
age." 

Mr. Sj^eaker, if the Congress of the United States were 
to direct an inscription upon marble to portray in the 
fewest and fittest words the essential sentiment of IIexuy 
Wilson's career, they would boiTOw it from Pericles, and 
would cut deep in the hard rock the words: "He con- 
stantly kept before his eyes the powers of the state, and 
he loved them. He sought for happiness in liberty, and 
for liberty in his own courag'e." 



AND CIIARACTEK OF HENRY "WILSON. 



Address by^Vlr. j^ynch, of ^Vlis 



Mr. Speaker, not long since the sad intelligence was 
flashed from one end of the country to the other that 
Henky Wilson, late Vice-President of the United States, 
was dead. This sad news carried a pang of sorrow and 
grief to the heart of every lover of his country and to 
every friend of liberty and justice. I shall not attempt 
to do justice to the memory of this great and good man. 
I shall refer more especially to his achievements as a 
public man — as a representative man. 

Mr. Wilson was known and recognized thi-oughout the 
civilized world as a man of acknowledged ability and 
admitted capacity. The period in which he Hved was 
one that enabled him to make for himself a record that is 
in every respect worthy of emulation. He was a man of 
broad, liberal, and conservative views upon public ques- 
tions. As was said of Henry Clay, it can also be said of 
Henry Wilson: 

His sympiitbies embraced all; the African slave, the Creole of 
Spanish America, the children of renovated classic Greece— all 
families of men, without respect to color or clime— found in his 
expanded bosom and comprehensive intellect a friend of their 
elevation and amelioration. Such ambition as that is God's 
implantation in the human heart for raising the downtrodden 
nations of the earth, and fitting them for regenerated existence in 
politics, in morals, and religion. 



128 ADDRESS BY MR. LYNCH ON THE 

In the person of Henry Wilson the poor have lost a 
true and consistent friend, the oppressed an able advocate, 
and the country a faithful public servant. He dedicated 
his entire life to the cause of liberty, justice, and equal 
rights. He regarded the institution of slavery as a foul 
blot upon our system of government, our civilization, and 
our Christianity. Recognizing tlie fact, as he did, that 
the tree of liberty had been planted upon American soil 
and watered with the precious blood of thousands of 
patriotic advocates of freedom, that we could not consist- 
ently tolerate and sustain an institution that was more 
aggravating and disgraceful than that of which the found- 
ers of our Government complained, and against which 
they were justified in rebelling, he did not entertain any 
feeling of ill-will toward those who did not agree with 
him in his views, nor toward those who were i)ersonal]y 
interested in perpetuating the existence of that institution 
which he regarded as a national disgrace, and to the 
destruction and abolition of which he devoted a long, 
useful, and successful life. But he was actuated by 
higher, nobler, and purer motives. He regarded the 
toleration of an institution which recognized the right of 
property in man as not only destructive of our system of 
government, subversive of true democracy, and as having 
a tendency to demoralize society, disturb the labor of the 
country, corrupt the morals of the masses, and retard the 
progress, happiness, and material prosperity of the people, 
but he also regarded it as contrar}' to the laws of Deity 



LIPE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 1-i'J 

and at war with true Christian civilization. Throughout 

his useful and eventful Hfe he never failed to raise his 

voice, to use his pen, and to cast his vote in the defense of 

those principles which he so consistently and persistently 

advocated. For his labors in the cause of humanity and 

justice the name of Henry Wilson will be gratefully 

remembered by generations yet unborn. 

During the memorable contest of 1856, over the 

admission of Kansas as a State in the Union, with the 

friends of freedom upon one side and the advocates of 

slavery upon the other, Henry Wilson was one of the 

few members of the United States Senate at that time who 

took a bold, independent, outspoken position in ftxvor of 

freedom for the slave. He did not oppose slavery simply 

from a stand-point of political expediency, but because he 

believed it to be morally and religiously wrong, as will 

appear from the following quotation from one of his great 

speeches that was delivered when the Kansas question 

was before the Senate: 

This question of slavery iu America is the graud ceutral idea 
of the country and of this age. If Senators imagine that anything 
that can be done in this or the other House of Congress, at this 
session or at any session, is to make peace iu this country between 
the great contending powers of freedom upon the one side and 
shivery upon the other, they are greatly mistaken ; they do not 
comprehend the vastness and extent of the issues. 

When we adopted the Constitution of the United States we were 
not responsible for slavery anywhere. If I had time, I could pass 
on from 1789 up to this time and show you act after act, under almost 
every administration, in which you have connected us with and 

17 W 



130 ADDRESS BY ME. LYNCH ON THE 

made us respousible for slavery. This legislation bas been iu 
violation of the policy adopted by the fiamers of the Constitution 
and the men who inaugurated this Goverument. Go back and 
undo this ; disconuect us from sliivery ; put no responsibility on ud ; 
and then our consciences and our judgments will be clear. If 
slavery is wrong, as I believe it to be — and I believe it to be a crime 
against man and a sin toward God, and I believe that to be the 
sentiment of the free States — it is not our crime, it is not our sin. 

Henry Wilson was an ardent and devoted lover of his 
country. As chaii-man of the Senate Committee on 
MiHtary Affairs dming the late war, he displayed such 
remarkable ability as to make his power and influence 
felt, acknowledged, and respected throughout the country. 
His advice and counsel were often sought by the Govern- 
ment, and seldom if ever rejected. His admonitions and 
remonstrances were seldom disregarded but often heeded, 
and never disrespected. He was justly looked upon by 
the country as one of the chief pillars of the Government 
during that important period of our country's history. 
His able speeches, his patriotic utterances, his statesman- 
like declarations, had the effect of giving renewed life 
and vigor to the cause of the Union and of strengthening 
the Union soldiers upon the field of battle. The Union 
soldier knew that in the person of Henry Wilson he had 
a true friend, an able advocate, and a strong defender. 

Since the beginning of reconstruction Henry Wilson 
has occupied a very conspicuous position. He was among 
the fii-st to advocate the adoption of a broad, liberal, and 
comprehens'ive system of reconstruction. I well remember 
his pathetic appeals to the old-line whigs of Virginia, 



LIFE ANT) CHARACTER OF HENRY WELSON. 1^1 

shortly after the adoption of the congressional plan of 
reconstruction, to join with the newly enfranchised element 
of the gi-and old Commonwealth in rehabilitating their 
State government upon a firm, lasting, and solid founda- 
tion. He appealed to them to lay aside their passions 
and prejudices of race, the existence of which is known 
and generally admitted to be the result of the toleration 
of slavery and not from natural causes, and join in with 
this new element that had been incoi-porated in the body- 
politic of the Commonwealth in reconstructing then- State 
government upon a basis that would prevent a repetition 
of previous mistakes. His advice to the old-line whigs 
of Virginia was no less applicable to the same element in 
every one of the States similarly situated. It is doubtless 
a source of serious regret to thousands of those he 
addressed that his advice was not accepted by them. 
They now recognize the fact that his object was to 
prevent the formation of parties upon the race issue. He 
could foresee the disastrous results that would follow a 
bitter political contest between antagonistic elements, 
whether it be based upon race, religion, or nationality. 
He could foresee that, if reconstruction was made an 
accomplished fact upon the basis of antagonism between 
the two great elements of which southern society is com- 
posed, passion and prejudice would take the place of 
reason and argument, and that the material interests of 
the people, the development of the resources of the 
country, and the cultivation of friendly relations between 



l.;_' adi)i;k6;s by mu. lvmch on tiik 

tlie sections would be made subordinate to the ambition 
of unscrupulous politicians. The results that have fol- 
lowed the rejection of Mr. Wilson's advice by those to 
whom it was given have very clearly demonstrated the 
wisdom of liis position. The serious apprehensions enter- 
tained by him as to the disastrous results that would be 
likely to follow the adoption of any other course have 
been unfortunately realized to an extent that is almost 
irreparable. It cannot be denied by those who are at all 
familiar with southern politics that the present unfortunate 
condition of affairs in that section of our country is due more 
to the existence of this antagonism between the two great 
elements in the South than to the faults and shortcomings 
of local, temporary, and periodical administrations. I 
believe there are but few who will not agree with me in 
asserting that had the views of Henry Wilson been 
accepted and generally acquiesced in, the Southern States 
would be in a prosperous and flourishing condition to-day. 
During the last two or three years of Mr. Wilson's life 
he saw proper to advance a few ideas upon what may be 
called the southern question, which subjected him to a 
little unfavorable criticism on the part of a few of those 
who are identified with the same political organization of 
which he was a distinguished leader; but they evidently 
did not understand his purposes nor appreciate his motives. 
Those who knew Henry Wilson, who have carefully 
watched his career since the beginning of reconstruction, 
could see in his recent utterances upon that subject the 



LIFE AND CHAEACTEE OF HENEY WILSON. 133 

same consistent determination to bring about, if possible, 
a union of the best elements from the two great masses of 
which southern society is composed. They could see the 
same manifestations of an extreme anxiety on his part to 
bring about hannony and a reciprocity of feeling between 
the two races in the South, Avhich all must admit is the 
most effectual if not the only remedy for the evils com- 
plained of in southern politics. 

Henry Wilson was a conscientious public man and a 
true Chi-istian. His character for honesty and integrity 
could never be questioned. His public career, though 
long and eventful, was one that was particularly free from 
everything that was impure, or even suspicious. His ex- 
ample is one that is in every particular worthy of emula- 
tion. The only thing that is consoling in the death of 
this great and good man is the fact that he left behind him 
a glorious record, and that, having lived the life of a pure 
and devoted Christian, he was enabled to say, "I have 
fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have 
kept the faith." Let us hope, Mr. Speaker, that we may 
live the life that Wilson lived, and die the death he died. 



ADDRESS BY MR. HURLBUT ON THE 



Address by Mr. Wurlbut, of Illinois. 



I shall not undertake, Mr. Si)eaker, to touch the details 
of the life of Henry Wilson, to delineate his character, 
nor to do more than refer to his eminent public service. 
That will be better done by men who stood nearer to him 
in his life, more competent to analyze the secret springs 
of his success and the real value of his work. I prefer to 
deal rather on this occasion with the general effect which 
the man himself has produced upon the thoughtful people 
Avho knew him only by the broad and general features of 
character as these framed and molded his public course 
and career. 

There are two names which go straight to the heart of 
that grand mass of thinkers and workers who constitute 
the American people. Abraham Lincoln and Henry 
Wilson, more than all others of our time, command the 
sympathy and hold the love of the people of the Union; 
both childi-en of adversity, both toilers from their infancy, 
both winning their way by dint of brain-work and the 
dominion of pure character to the high places of the Re- 
public. Differing in many essential qualities, contrasted 
in many elements of power, alike in the capacity of 



LIPE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. ISO 

thorough conviction and of unfaUering action in the 
straight Une of such conviction, each colored and per- 
vaded by the pecuhar atmosphere of his special suiTound- 
ings, both fearlessly, intensely, absolutely American, such 
men could only be reared in one country; such men could 
only have come to the fi-ont in one epoch of that country. 

Henry Wilson, by the force of patient labor, of solid 
will, of fearless belief, of effort to know the right and to 
do the right, clove asunder the icy bamers which society 
had placed between the New Hampshire boy and the 
Massachusetts Senator. He had the heroism to stand by 
the unpopular if he believed he stood by the true — a hero- 
ism nearly as rai-e now as it was then — and he had the 
rare satisfaction in his own life-time of seeing the right 
thing pass from opprobrium and opposition to success and 
accomplishment. 

From his early days he abhoiTed slavery as deserving 
curse from God and man, and he struck straight at the 
heart of the hoary iniquity enthroned on the prejudice of 
customs and buttressed though it was by unholy alliance 
of church and state. His clear moral vision was clouded 
by no cunningly-wrought veil; no device, no subterfuge, 
no cheat in word or action, could dim the anatomic eye 
which detected and exposed the loathsome lines that indi- 
cated disease and death in the painted harlot who queened 
it over the fairest portion of the Republic. The strict 
constructionists of that day, North and South, denounced 
him. Pilate and Herod struck hands, but the brave heart, 



j;;0 ADDRESS BV MR. IIUTJLBUT O.N THE 

strong from continuous struggle, flinched in no wise fi'oni 
the task self-imposed and self-sustained. He lived to see 
the dead carcass of the great wrong bm-ied forever out of 
the sight of men, and the once blackened bosom of the 
nation pure again from that ancient sin. He lived to do 
his part as a man should in the j)hysical struggle — the 
trial of colossal foi'ces that shook our broad territory and 
made its earth-fast foundations tremble with the step of 
uncounted hosts. He saw the authority of the Constitu- 
tion and the supremacy of law vindicated; he saw those 
who rashly took the sword punished by the sword; he 
heard the sounding hammer-blows of a hundred battles, 
as in the white heat of the rebellion they welded the 
nation into indissoluble unity. He heard the glorious 
sentiment of his great predecessor, "The Union, now and 
forever, one and inseparable," pronounced as the grand 
lesult of the tremendous conflict, and wrought into the 
life and conscience of millions of his countrymen as the 
one primal, controlling fact before which all others were 
dwarfed into insignificance. Filled himself with the largest 
view of this intense nationality, he rejoiced that it filled 
the heart of the nation. 

As Senator, as chairman of the Military Committee, he 
did much valuable work, work which the country hardly 
appreciates 5'et ; and it stands to his eternal credit that in 
the exercise of the Avide discretion and vast power held 
by him in that capacity no sordid nor selfish nor sectional 
preference ever impaired the justice of his action. 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. l6t 

He took liis part fairly and well in all the legislation 
which followed the war ; nor liav6 I ever heard any man 
say that in anything done or said by him in all that time 
there was personal bitterness or desire for revenge. 

He was active as a politician, for he believed in the 
necessitv of vigorous and enlightened political action. 
He made enemies, as all strong men do ; but even this 
time in which we live, prolific in slander and promi)t to 
accuse, never charged HtXEV Wilson with dishonest act 
or impure motive. 

Kot standing in the rank of our greatest men, measured 
by intellectual standards, his influence was due more to 
faith in his personal character, his devotion to right, than 
to pre-eminent mental stature. 

He did the work set before him to do with the same 
good faith and the same steady energy with which he 
filled out the coarser tasks of his early manhood, and the 
people for whom he labored so long and well heartily 
unite in the plaudits of "good and faithful servant," as 
they look back upon his long career of public service and 
feel that it is well with any people when fi-om its institu- 
tions and modes of life and thought can spring such a life 
and such a character as that of Henry Wilson. 



ADDRESS BY MR. REAGAN ON THE 



Address by Mr. Reagan, of Texas. 



Some days ago it was suggested that I should take a 
pai-t in the addresses on this occasion. I had then, on 
account of the pressure of other duties, reluctantly to 
decline to do so. Until I saw the list to-day of those who 
were to make addresses I did not know that it was antici- 
pated I should say anything on this occasion, and what I 
do say shall be limited to stating an incident illustrative 
of the character and \Ti'tues and the charity of the great 
man whose memory is this day being honored. 

My first personal acquaintance with Mr. Wilson was in 
1857, and our associations were such as might spring up 
between two men of different ages and different positions, 
and differing in politics. At the close of the war I was 
made, with others, a prisoner, and was taken, with Mr. 
Alexander H. Stephens, now a member of this House, to 
Fort Warren. In the fall of the year 1865, when we 
were released, I immediately returned to the city of New 
York, and while spending a few days there I met with 
Mr. Wilson, who was then engaged in canvassing the 
State of New York. We had a somewhat free conversa- 
tion about the condition in which the country then was, 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WI1.S0N. 16'J 

and especially about the condition of that section of the 
country in which I lived. A short time before that, feel- 
ing that I comprehended the condition of the country and 
what would be necessary for the future, not only of the 
southern portion but of all of it, I had addressed a com- 
munication to the people of Texas from my prison, urging 
them to accept promptly the inevitable results of the war 
as the shortest and surest way to bring to an end the evils 
which had sprung from it, advising them not only to 
recognize the freedom of the slaves, but to secvire to them 
the protection of the law and to concede to them the 
qualified right of suffrage. This had been published, and 
had come back and been read by Senator Wilson. It 
became the subject of conversation. He asked my opinion 
as to whether the people of Texas and the South would 
accept the policy indicated in that communication. I had 
to tell him that I could only express the hope they might 
do so ; that for more than four years I had not been in 
the State in which I lived or mingled with the people of 
that State. He then said — and I repeat it now because it 
is in accordance with what others, his personal friends 
and acquaintances, say of his character ; for I would not 
if it were different from that speak of what was merely a 
private conversation — he then said he felt it was a duty I 
owed to Texas and the South, as well as the rest of the 
country, to return home and urge the people to adopt the 
policy which I had suggested. He said to me at the same 
time that if the people of Texas and of the South generally 



140 ADDRESS BY MR. REAGAN ON THE 

would for themselves adopt that policy he would accept 
it as a final basis of adjustment of the remaining differ- 
ences between the North and the South, and would urge 
its adoption in the Senate of the United States, with the 
exception that he would ask that the cases of one or two 
hundred of the leading men should stand over, and that 
in addition to that which I had suggested he would urge, 
if they saw proper to take that course, that all except this 
one or two hundred he referred to should be at once 
relieved from all liability on account of having pailici- 
pated in the war. 

In the condition in which I was then placed, with the 
feelings I then experienced, remembering that I was 
returning to a desolated country and a conquered people 
to mingle again with them, looking abroad and seeing the 
passions which the war had aroused, remembering the 
earnest, active part which that distinguished Senator had 
taken on the one side while he knew that I had been as 
earnestly engaged on the other, I could not but feel 
that there was something of a grand magnanimity in his 
conduct, something of kindness and of generosity in his 
expressions, which met with an earnest and sincere 
response from me. 

I may say one other thing. He then informed me that 
while Mr. Stephens and myself were in prison at Fort 
Warren he had come from his home in Massachusetts 
twice to Washington to secure our release, not on account 
of any application which had been made to him by us 



LIFE AND CHAKACTEE OF DENEY WILSON. 141 

for that kindness, but because he felt that there was no 
necessity for retaining us there; for he did not feel any 
spirit of revenge, and, as was disclosed in the conversa- 
tion we then had, he felt, as his great colaborer Horace 
Greeley had felt, that it was not his desire in freeing the 
slaves of the South to make slaves of those who had been 
free in the South. He did not wish to see the passions of 
the war protracted, and ui-ged as a reason why I sliuidd 
endeavor to secure in the portion of the country where I 
lived the policy I had indicated that the adoption of such 
a policy was the only thing that could avert military 
government there, the consequences that would spring 
from it, and dangers which might result to the Union 
from having to control large sections of the country by 
military authority. 

Mr. Speaker, words so spoken to one situated as I was 
it will be understood would make an impression wliich 
has gone with me from then till now. After my return 
homo, when my friends in Texas who desired to bo 
relieved at Washington, and who had no acquaintance 
here, applied to me to see if there was some person here 
who would take an interest in their behalf, I did not 
hesitate on more than one occasion to write to Senator 
Wilson on their behalf, and I never wrote to him without 
getting a prompt and kindly answer, indicating a desire 
to do what he could for the interests of our people. 
Whatever differences in politics may have existed in the 
past, and however divergent our views may have been on 



ADDRESS BY ME. REAGAN ON THE 



great questions; however earnestly we may have struggled 
on opposite sides in the days in which we had opposed 
each other, expressions like these and kindness like this 
made me feel that these were the expressions and the 
kindness of a sincere and just heai-t, and it makes me 
feel sincere gratification that I have the privilege of saying 
so in this presence on this occasion. 

I am not qualified by association or information to 
dwell upon the historic features of his character, nor is it 
necessary that I should do so if I were, after the eloquent 
portraitures of his character which have been made upon 
this floor to-day. I did not rise to make an addi-ess. I 
only rose to speak of these incidents, and to speak of 
them as having made me feel a sincere respect for him 
while living, and feeling that his death, occurring when it 
did, was a misfortune to om- common country. A year 
ago, sir, when Mr. Wilson was making a torn- through 
the Southern States, the people of Texas in large numbers, 
and with whom I united, urgent!}' invited him to come to 
Texas to enable us to testify our feeling of respect for his 
generous and -manly conduct toward us in the hour of our 
calamity and misfortune. 



LIFE AND CHAEACTER OP HENEY WILSON. 



Address by Mr. Joyce, of Vermont. 



Mr. Speaker, again a dark shadow covers the Capitol 
and veils its lofty Dome in gloom. Relentless death has 
again entered the Senate House, and with remorseless 
fury struck down the chief 

Henry Wilson is dead. His last work has been per- 
formed, his last duty discharged, and he has gone to his 
reward. 

To-day a nation mourns its loss and bows in grief at 
its bereavement; from Champlain to the GuLf; from 
Faneuil Hall to the golden shores, the Republic is 
shrouded in mourning, and its mighty heart ceases for a 
moment its pulsations while humanity places the chaplet 
upon the tomb of the philanthropist, the patriot statesman, 
and the Christian. 

0, what a wealth of sorrow; what a majesty of woe! 

Among the millions who gather in sorrow around his 
open grave, to pay the last sad tribute to his memory, 
come the brave and patriotic people of my own State, and 
claim a near aj)proach to that sacred spot. 

Vermont comes to-day to add one more leaf to the 
garland that decorates his tomb. 

Outside the limits of the noble Commonwealth in which 



14i ADDUESS BY ME. JOYCE ON THE 

repose his aslies — a State so rich in historical events, in 
clustering memories, in great names, and in noble men — 
there is no spot in the broad universe where he was more 
loved and respected and where his memory is more 
honored and revered than in the State I have the honor 
in part to represent. 

His name is as familiar as those of her own sons in 
every cottage and cabin that nestles among her green hills. 

It seemed to me that it would be eminently jJi'oper 
that the descendants of Slade and Harrington, pioneers 
in the cause of civil liberty, should come to the humble 
tomb at Natick as near mourners of the illustrious dead. 

The doctrine of human freedom and the political 
equality of all men before the law is as firmly and deeply 
rooted in the hearts of her people to-day as it was on the 
morning when Allen was doomed to an immortality of 
fame and Stark drove the mercenaries of King George, 
routed and bleeding, from the plains of Bennington. 

The whole pathway of histoiy sparkles with the names 
of illustrious men and the noble deeds of heroes and 
pati-iots; but it was reserved to the nineteenth century to 
furnish the most remarkable body of men that has ever 
existed in the world's annals. 

Garrison, and Sumner, and Hale, and Lovejoy, and 
Giddings, with whom were associated Slade, and Nichol- 
son, and Fletcher, and Shaffter, and Marsh of my own 
State, were among the leaders and heroes of the old anti- 
slavery party — a party which embodied the very essence 



LIFE ANB CHARACTEE OF HENEY WILSON. 145 

and spii'it of integrity, perseverance, independence,^ honest 
convictions, high and exalted moral courage, and genuine 
public virtue. With these men Henry Wilson was early 
enlisted in the great work of emancipation and enfran- 
chisement, to which he devoted every energy of body 
and mind during his whole life. He espoused this un- 
popular cause when it required physical as well as moral 
courage to do it. 

With CoUamer and Foot he bore the heat and burdens 
of the day ; with them he bore the vexation and ignominy 
of a temporary defeat, and with them at last rejoiced in a 
complete and glorious \actory. And the last public act of 
his life was an eloquent and stirring address to Vermont's 
survivors of the gi-eat conflict, rejoicing with them in its 
grand results, and imparting words of encouragement and 
precepts of wisdom by which to shape the present and 
guide them in the future. 

New Hampshire may claim the honor of his birthplace, 
Massachusetts his home and last resting-place, but his un- 
tarnished fame and the history of his noble life cannot be 
circumscribed by State lines. It is the nation's legacy 
and the rich heritage of the Republic. 

The period of Mr. Wilson's life was in some respects the 
golden age of our country's history. It was a time which 
called for men of iron nerve, of settled conscientious con- 
victions, and manly independence. 

It was a time which demanded men who were not afi-aid 
to do right regardless of the consequences ; who were 



110 ADDRESS BY MB. JOYCE ON THE 

willing to bear the taunts, sneers, and persecutions of the 
champions of an accursed institution intrenched behind 
power, wealth, learning, influence, and religious bigotry. 

Such a man was found in Henry Wilson ; a man for- 
tunate in his origin and iiseful life, and equally fortunate 
in the time and place of his death. 

In early life he was the child of poverty and domestic 
sorrow ; he was cast out upon the cold chai-ities of the 
world and left upon his own resources ; he labored and 
struggled, buffeting the world's adverse fortunes and 
storms with a strong arm and an honest heart, strong in 
his own conscious rectitude ; and in God's own good time 
was ushered at once into the public arena, to combat with 
intellectual gladiatorial champions scarcely excelled in the 
Avorld's history. 

Manfully he bore himself in the great struggle, battling 
for the right against w^ealth, arrogance, and power. Dis- 
daining the codes and dogmas of honor, falsely so called, 
he planted himself upon the eternal principles of self- 
defense and personal preservation until victory crowned 
his efforts and the voice of his country called him to the 
second position in the nation. 

Mr. Wilson's industry was untiring and knew no 
bounds. He allowed himself neither recreation nor re- 
pose, but, amid all the vast and multiplied labors of his 
official position, devoted himself with unfoltering courage 
to the second great work of his life, the gathering up and 
preserving the facts and fragments relating to the rise and 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. HI 

fall of the slave power in America, in order that some 
future Bancroft may write the history of that gigantic 
struggle and glorious victory. The work he peiformed 
was immense, and a just and generous posterity will award 
him the meed of praise which is justly and honestly his 
due for his invaluable services in the cause of justice and 
equal rights. 

Of his long and honorable career in the National Legis- 
lature I need not speak ; it is a part of the history of our 
country, and the world knows it by heart. 

His herculean labors at the head of the Senate Com- 
mittee on Military Affairs during the war for the supremacy 
of the Government are beyond description, and can be fully 
known only by those who were his associates in anxious 
solicitude and toil. 

The great Lincoln leaned upon him in the dark hours 
as a firm support, while every pulsation of his heart, dur- 
ing the whole term of his official life, was for the honor 
and welfare of the Republic, for human freedom, and the 
emancipation and enfranchisement of the oppressed. 

Among the foremost of the patriot band to whom, under 
God, we are indebted for universal liberty, peace, and a 
redeemed and reunited country, stood Heney Wilson. 
He never flinched or faltered; when the hearts of the timid 
quaked with fear he was always hopeful and courageous; 
when others doubted and turned back he stood firm as a 
rock in mid-ocean until the storm had spent its fury and 
peace again brooded over the face of the great deep. 



148 ADDRESS BY ME. JOYCE ON THE 

When grim-visaged war had smoothed his wrinkled 
front, and the dark clouds which had lowered npon our 
country were in the deep bosom of the ocean buried, he 
was among the first to counsel forgiveness and brotherly 
love ; and no man rejoiced more than he did in the era of 
good feeling inaugurated at Lexington and Concord, 
Ticonderoga and Bunker Hill, at the late centennial cele- 
bration ; and he looked forward with a longing anxiety 
and joyous delight to the gi-eat exposition at Philadelphia, 
in 1876, when he hoped to witness the final burial of the 
last sad relic of the great civil strife, and the principles it 
had forever settled, and which he had helped so much to 
crystallize and establish, should be honestly and in good 
faith accepted by all, the rights of all men everywhere 
respected, and peace and good-fellowship once more reign 
thi'oughout the whole length and breadth of our favored 
Republic. 

Vice-President Wilson was not, perhaps, great as an 
orator, a scholar, or a statesman ; but he was great in in- 
dustry, in the power of intense and continued application, 
in toil, in courage, in assiduous, conscientious devotion to 
duty. 

He was great in honesty and integrity, in his moral 
courage, and in the faith and practice of Christianity. 

He marched, by the power of his own will, his indom- 
itable industry, and his patriotic impulses, from the bench 
of the shoemaker to the Senate of the United States; from 
his humble calling at Natiek to the responsible duties at 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 14"J 

Washington. In all his conduct, both pubhc and private, 
conscience was his constant monitor and guiding star. No 
hope of earthly reward or preferment could swerve him 
from the path of duty and no threats could silence his voice . 
or cause him to abate his ardor in the great work to which 
he had consecrated his life. Amid the storms and tem- 
pests of political life, when the loved and honored were 
suspected and shaken like a reed, he stood proudly forth, 
pure and undefiled. No stain of corruption ever tarnished 
the luster of his bright escutcheon and no bribe ever left 
its plague-spot upon his hand. Surrounded during his 
official life with the blandishments of power and the fasci- 
nations of wealth, he preserved his character, and died 
comparatively poor. While many of the gifted and 
mighty were swallowed up in the whirlpool of dissipation 
and crime, he walked among them with a charmed life, 
and came out of the furnace with not so much as the smell 
of fire upon his garments. 

Every noble cause and genuine refonii found in him an 
eloquent advocate and an ardent champion. He i-epre- 
sented in an eminent degi-ee the noble elements of our 
American nationality. His life was the natural and gen- 
erous outgi-owth of our free institutions and of our higher 
and purer civilization. His character and history demon- 
strate what industry, will, determination, and integrity 
can accomplish, and show the value and advantage of 
steady perseverance and continued and honest adherence 
to conscientious convictions 



].»() ADDKKSS BY MR. JOYCE ON THE 

He lived to see the great work of his life accomplished: 
the political equality of all men securely imbedded in the 
organic law, and the emancipated and enfranchised bond- 
man standing as the honored representatives of American 
freemen in both bi-anches of the National Legislature. 

If he had ambition, it was an ambition to do right, to 
advance the welfere of his fellow-men, and be reckoned 
among the woi'ld's benefactors. If he desired position, it 
was because it would enable him to accomplish more for 
humanity and render greater service to his country. 

His convictions were clear cut and as firm as the granite 
hills of his native State ; he believed in political parties, 
and loved his own almost to idolatry ; but no partisan 
blindness prevented his seeing its errors, and no timid, 
time-serving policy could deter him from pointing them 
out and demanding their correction. 

If he had faults, they were of the negative kind, and 
were so mixed up with bold and generous deeds that the 
world could scarce discern them. 

It is well that he died under the roof and almost upon 
the very spot where he had won his earthly laurels and 
helped to achieve one of the greatest victories recorded 
upon the pages of human history. With worldly honors 
thick upon him and the prayers of a grateful and generous 
nation filling the whole land, his spirit took its flight from 
the portals of the National Capitol, with the shackles 
struck fi-om four millions of bondmen, the shining record 
of a well-spent Hfe, and a \atal and living faith in a 



LIPE AND CHAEACTEE OF HENEY WILSON. 151 

crucified Sa\'iour, to gain him admittance to the golden 
city. Tender hands and loving hearts were there in the 
trying horn* to smooth his pathway to the tomb and watch 
the precious sands as they gently ebbed away. And then, 
as was so beautifully said of another of Massachusetts 
illustrious sons : 

With .solemn steps aud sorrowing- hearts, they bore him back 
to the State he served so ftiithfully aul which loved him so well; 
aud to her soil, precious with the &:ist of patriotism and of valor, 
of letters and of art, of statesmanship aud of eloquence, they 
have committed the body of him who is worthy to rest by the 
side of the noblest and the best of those who, in the century of 
her history, have made her the model of a free Commonwealth. 

His last public utterance was an admonition to those 
with whom he had acted politically, which they will do 
well to observe and heed ; it was characteristic of the 
man ; it breathed a spirit of patriotic devotion to country 
and an anxious solicitude for the prosperity and welfare 
of her people. 

And to-day, as we stand around the open grave of him 
who harbored no malice, but whose love of country and 
pure and lofty patriotism knew no North, no South, no 
East, no West, let us bury every feeling of bitterness and 
sectional animosity ; let us pledge ourselves anew to our 
country and receive a new baptism into her service ; let us 
all rally around the old flag with all its glorious histories 
and recollections, drawing our inspiration from one living 
fountain, and, with one heart, one purpose, and one impulse, 
press on together to a common and glorious destiny. 



ADDRESS BY MR. LAWRENCE ON THE 



Address by Mr. Lawrence, of Ohio. 



Mr. Speaker : I ask the indulgence of the House for a 
few moments while I pay a brief tribute of respect to the 
memory of the illustrious dead. It was my good fortune 
duiing seven sessions of Congress to board at the same 
house and sit at the same table with the honored citizen 
whose demise we now mourn. During all that time, and 
more, I had the honor to share his friendship. I had many 
opportunities to know the qualities of head and heart which 
render his name dear to the people of every land, and which 
have made it illustrious thi-oughout the world. It is Avell 
that we should pause in the work of legislation to express 
a profound respect for these, to study them as a means of 
instruction for ourselves, and that we may be inspired 
with an earnest purpose to profit by the lessons Avhich 
they teach. 

It is one of the advantages of our republican form of 
government that it gives equal opportunity to all to fill 
every place of public trust, to render useful services to 
mankind, and to rise to the highest distinction which pri- 
vate worth and public service and useful and meritorious 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OP HENRY WILSON. 153 

labors can give. This fact is illustrated in a remarkable 
degree by the life, character, and services of the deceased, 
and by the fruits which they have borne. These have 
been so fully stated, and are so widely known, and are so 
interwoven with the history of our times and the gi-eat 
movements of nearly half a century in behalf of humanity, 
right, and good government, that it is wholly unnecessary 
for me to speak of them in detail. It is well that these 
should be studied by young men and all men, that they 
may know the elements which made the life of Henry 
Wilson a grand success. To some of these I may briefly 
allude. First of all, Henry Wilson was "the noblest 
work of God " — an honest man. Without this quality no 
man can rise to and maintain permanent success. His 
life illustrated a fact which cannot be too widely known: 
that "there is no excellence without great labor" — Nil 
sine magno vita labore dedit mortalibus. Few men ever de- 
voted more hours to industrious study, to patient investi- 
gation, to laborious attention to every duty, than did 
Henry Wilson. The results of these are before us and 
mankind, teaching their lessons of usefulness. His offi- 
cial and literary labors were immense. In Congress he 
was not a great declaimer, but he was a great orator. He 
spoke ably and strongly for the right. Another charac- 
teristic brought its rewards: he always dared to do right, 
and tnist to God and the sober second thought of the 
people to sustain him. 

When oppression and wrong sit in places of power, or 



20 w 



154 ADDRESS BY MR. LAWRENCE ON THE 

for a time control the popular will, men who are not actu- 
ated from a sense of duty may bow to the storm. These 
are dangerous and unsafe men. Henry Wilson was not 
of this class. In all he said or did he was guided by the 
love and fear of God and a purpose to benefit mankind. 

In all the relations of life the heart of Henry Wilson 
overflowed with kindness and a tender regard for the feel- 
ings of all his fellow-men. He was kindly and gentle in 
his nature; he never turned away unheard the request of 
the most humble or lowly. 

His life and labors prove that his acquirements were 
extensive and varied, and these he had the natural and 
educated ability to apply so as to make them bring suc- 
cess, and to enroll his among the "immortal names that 
were not born to die." He has passed to his reward. 
More than a nation mourns his loss. 

The good he has done will live after him; it is a pail of 
imperishable history in which he bore a useful and con- 
spicuous part. His monument is more durable tJian brass. 
It will be seen and known through the endlesf cyol 3s of 
eternity. 



LIFE AND CHAKACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 



Address by M.r. Lapham, of New York. 



Mr. Speaker, it would perhaps become my position best, 
not having been accustomed to speak on this floor, to 
refrain from expressing any of the thoughts which are 
crowding for utterance at the present moment. There is, 
however, a single view of the life, character, and services 
of the late Vice-President, alreadj^ referred to by those who 
have preceded me, upon which I will dwell for a moment, 
for I am not willing tliat the great State I have the honor 
in part to represent should remain entirely silent on an 
occasion like this. 

When, at so short a period since that it seems but as yes- 
terday, our Chief Magistrate was stricken down by the 
hand of an assassin, all the civilized nations of the earth 
united with us in mourning and sympathy for the great 
loss we had sustained in the tragic death of our patriot 
President. 

Now that the second officer of the Government has 
fallen almost as suddenly by the stroke of disease, our 
grief is scarcely less intense. Such emotions of sorrow 
arise not solely by reason of the exalted stations from 
which these truly great men have fallen, but also from a 
remembrance of the humble origin of each. Each had 
risen from obscurity and poverty to such exalted station, 
not by any sudden fortune, but by patient and steady 



ADDRESS BY MR. LAPHAM ON THE 



steps of progress. Each furnislaed an example of that 
gradual growth in greatness and goodness attainable only 
under institutions of government like ours. They were 
eminently the children of the Republic. 

Mr. Wilson, amidst all the honors and blandishments 
of office and place, never lost sight of the obscure condi- 
tion from which he had risen. He was always full and 
fervent in sympathy with suffering and intense hatred of 
wrong. He lived a life of singular purity and of the most 
unswerving fidelity to his convictions of duty. It was 
this which endeared him to the masses of the American 
people, and which renders his demise a source of the most 
profound grief 

Although the grave covers him, and all that was visible 
to us is forever hidden from our sight, yet, sir, it is not 
death. The noble example his wonderfully useful life 
has furnished to the young of every station wiW long en- 
dure, and serve to emulate the rising statesmen of the 
Republic. 

As has been so felicitously written by a Massachusetts 
poet of the late distinguished colleague of Mr. Wilson in 
the Senate, so it may also be fitly said of him : 

Alike are life and death, 

When life in death survives, 
And the uninterrupted breath 

Inspires a thousand lives. 
Were a star quenched on high. 

For ages would its light, 
Still traveling downward from the sky, 

Shine on our mortal sight ; 
So when a great man dies. 

For years beyond our ken 
The light, be leaves behind him lies 

Upon the paths of men. 



LIFE A>D CHARACTER OF HENRY 'WTLSON. 



yi^ddress by JAr. Blair, of New Wampshire. 



Mr. Sjieaker, the gi'eat men whose forms we have seen 
and who in their lives have illustrated and vindicated the 
principles of American liberty and of just government on 
earth, who preserved them by the great deeds of the war 
and crystallized the ideas evolved in the debates and bat- 
tles of this momentous era into enduring forms of consti- 
tutional legislation, are rapidly disappearing fi-om the 
scene. 

Among them all, with one pre-eminent exception, 
whose apotheosis was by martyrdom, there was no man 
who, by his early and intense convictions ; bis life-long, 
zealous, judicious, and unwearied labors ; his perennially 
youthful and steadfast faith in the final triumph of the 
cause of freedom in the entire land ; who, by his resources 
in disaster, his confidence even in seasons of despair, his 
wise counsels, his sagacious perception and forecasting of 
the currents of thought and of the actual condition of the 
public judgment and of the impulses of the popular heart, 
accomplished more in his life-time for his country and for 
mankind, no man who better deserves to be immortalized 
among the benefactors of humanity, than he whose name 



BY MK. BLAIR ON THE 



dignified even the lofty official appellation of Vice-Presi- 
dent of the United States, and whose memory draws 
sweet tears from the eyes of thousands of his countrymen, 
while over his new-made grave the frozen winds of dis- 
tant New England are singing their requiem to-day. 

Henry Wilson was a great man, not alone in moral 
heroism, which was perhaps the strong aspect of his char- 
acter, not alone because he was ever equally ready with 
his most inflexible associates to dare and to do all things 
fur his principles ; but more especially in this, that he 
more than most of them knew how to so do and dare that 
doing and daring might not be in vain. He was a prac- 
tical statesman. He was great because he knew men and 
dealt with them as men. He recognized the truth, which 
must ever be applied by those who transmute abstractions 
into human history and transfer the dreams of the ideal 
into the concrete utilities of life, that means must be 
adapted to ends, and that the average motives of a nation 
must be reached and stimulated, in order to accompli.sli a 
national result. 

The industrial institutions of a people are seldom, 
unless remotely, aflected by purely moral causes. It is 
only when such forces have taken hold of material inter- 
ests, that men will consent to overturn the existing state, 
and it was given to Henry Wilson more clearly than to 
almost any other of the great men who led the prevailing 
sentiment of the nation during its last and great transi- 
tion, to comprehend that practical democracy or republi- 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 15!) 

canism is equality in the conditions of toil. His own 
rugged lot in early life, when he struggled with adverse 
fate in his native New Hampshire, whose pride in his 
career and earnest love for the pure life and noble man- 
hood of her son are the sole reason why my voice is lifted 
in this august presence to-day, enabled him to compre- 
hend how real freedom is something more than mere 
absence of legal restraint ; that the bondage of the colored 
man was less the consequence of positive law than of 
those relations and conditions of society, of which the 
positive law itself was an outgrowth and consequence, 
and not a cause. He comprehended how all laborers, 
whether of the North or South and of whatever race, were 
enslaved in a substantial sense by the existence of the 
institution of slavery anywhere on the national domain, 
and, whether sanctioned by the laws of the land or other- 
wise, how impossible it was, and is, for these opposing 
tendencies to co-exist permanently under one common 
government. 

He knew, for he was instinctively a statesman, that 
unless the principle of absolutely free labor should pre- 
vail, whatever might be the written law, the opposing 
principle would wax stronger and stronger, until the labor- 
ing man everywhere would be practically enslaved by 
the custom of the country. It is a great mistake to im- 
agine that all the slavery which existed within the limits 
of the Union was confined to the colored race and to the 
Southern States. The poison was in the atmosphere of 



160 ADDRESS BY ME. BLAIR ON THE 

the continent and all over the country ; the white race, 
too, was in partial bondage, and neither, although greatly 
enlarged, is absolutely and practically free even to-day. 
Ignorance is slavery. ■ Mighty prejudices, the fetters of 
the soul, are still unbroken, and magnificent victories of 
peace are yet to be won. We have entered upon a new 
era, wherein the tendencies and prevailing influences point 
to the ultimate emancipation of all men, to a period 
wherein every yoke shall be broken, and the oppressed 
shall some time in the millenial future be absolutely free. 
In this great exigency of our generation, which we hope 
we have passed fully through in crossing the Joi'dan of 
this triumphant transition, it was given to Henry Wilson 
to march conspicuously in front of the halting host for 
many years, bearing aloft the standard of equality for all. 
It was his to rally, as with the bugles of his native hills, 
the moi-e elevated sentiments of the nation, to largely aid 
to forge its stray convictions into a solid mass, until the 
moral and material motives and forces of the people over- 
came all opposition, and the broad theory of absolute 
freedom for all has been established forever as the fun- 
damental working model of the Government. In this great 
work the war was but an incident, terrible, to be sure, but 
inevitable ; past now, thank God, but full sure to return 
unless its causes are avoided, its fruits garnered, and its 
conclusions sacredly regarded; and it would, methinks, 
increase the joys of -"he blessed dead to hear the generous 
tributes to departed worth, with which these chastened 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. IGl 

walls have this day echoed the eloquent grief of our sunny 
and beloved South for him who lived and died the true 
friend of every human being on earth. 

Since the termination of the strife, no man has labored 
more strenuously than the late Vice-President, not only 
to secure the enactment of the decision of arms into 
proper and endm-ing forms of constitutional law, but more 
especially have his broad patriotism and humane senti- 
ments made him indefatigable in his endeavors to secure 
the full return of reciprocal love between the sections of 
our country so unfortunately imbittered against each 
other by the unavoidable animosities of fratricidal war. 

Probably no man contributed more than he to the 
revival of these gentler thoughts and more generous sen- 
timents which are prevailing to-day, and which may God 
grant us to cultivate more and more iintil no discordant 
note shall mar the joy of our centennial year. 

Henry Wilson is dead. His voice is hushed. His 
great heart is still. His form has vanished. To-morrow 
the Capitol will put away its badges of mourning, and 
history alone will know aught more of him on earth for- 
ever. But he has left to the patriot, the statesman, and 
the Christian the lofty example of an unsullied and illus- 
trious life ; to the toiling man and woman and child of 
every race and clime, and of all ages to come, an inspira- 
tion ; to his native and to his adopted State, and to the 
whole country which he loved so well, the memory of a 
character most rare and exalted, a charactei* which under 



1(12 ADDRESS BY MR. BLAIR. 

the adverse conditions of his origin our precious institu- 
tions alone could have made possible ; and as time rolls 
away his fame will grow brighter and rise higher in the 
firmament of history until it shines perpetually, a fixed 
star in the resplendent galaxy of the greatest and best of 
his generation. 

The resolutions were then unanimously adopted and the 
House adjourned. 



t».0t m 



MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 

ON THE 

Life and Character 

OF 

Henry Wilson, 

( VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, ) 



DELIVERED IN THE 



Senate and House of Representatives, 

January 21, 1876, 



WITH OTHER 



CONGRESSIONAL TRIBUTES OF RESPECT. 



PUBLISHED BV ORDER OF CONGRESS. 



WASH I NO TON: 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 
1876. 



m 




DOBBS BIIOS. "^ . " • , 

maT"Ti ''^'^; 



